Susan Balenger, Assistant Professor at UM since 2016, received her Ph. D. at Auburn University in 2011, was a postdoctoral researcher in the Division of Genetics and Physiology at the University of Turku in Finland in 2011 & was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota in 2012. Her research addresses why and how environmental stressors and phenotypic plasticity influence sexual signal evolution and population divergence. In the Balenger lab research activities utilize genetics and genomics approaches, laboratory experimental manipulations, and field observations of natural populations.