Professor
Department of Zoology, Biodiversity Research Centre
Contact Details
laviles@zoology.ubc.ca
Website(s)
Leticia Avilés is a professor at UBC in the Department of Zoology and the Biodiversity Research Centre. In her research, she investigates how broad environmental gradients shape the nature of organisms and their interactions. With a focus on arthropods, studies in her lab explore how insect size, spider web characteristics, level of sociality, mutualism, predation and parasitism change along elevation and precipitation gradients in Ecuador. Earlier work used social spiders as a model system to address themes including the ecology and biogeography of social evolution, the consequences of inbreeding, and sociality and community assembly.
Research Themes
Ecology | Social evolution | Evolutionary biology | Population dynamics
Geographical Area(s) of Research
Brazil | Costa Rica | Ecuador