Cynthia J. Downs BS, PhD

Cynthia Downs is an ecological physiologist who investigates how the diverse physiological traits expressed by animals alter an animal’s interaction with its environment and mediates the animal’s ecology and evolutionary trajectories. Her research focuses on the organismal level, but she integrates across levels of biological organization to ask questions about how animals work.

Downs' research program seeks to understand several things: mechanisms that mediate physiological traits and trade-offs, how physiological traits determine life histories, and how environmental conditions affect physiological phenotypes. She received a doctorate from the University of Nevada Reno, and completed postdoctoral appointments at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the University of Nevada Reno.