Climate change is among the most important threats to global biodiversity. To accurately forecast its impacts on the biosphere, it is important to develop a thorough understanding of current and historical responses of diverse biological systems to environmental changes.

To make progress toward this goal, I work across levels of organization (from molecules to ecosystems), timescales (from seconds to millions of years), and taxonomic groups (bacteria, invertebrates, birds, and mammals).

The main themes of my research to date are:

1. Evolutionary adaptation of physiological traits to environmental factors

1A. Ectotherms

In ectotherms, the performance of physiological traits (e.g., respiration) is typically a unimodal function of temperature. The shape of this relationship exhibits remarkable variation across traits, taxa, and environments. To better understand how such variation emerges, I perform phylogenetic meta-analyses of large empirical datasets, accounting for key environmental factors.

Selected key publications:

• Kontopoulos, D.-G., Sentis, A., Daufresne, M., Glazman, N., Dell, A.I., and Pawar, S. (2024). No universal mathematical model for thermal performance curves across traits and taxonomic groups. Nature Communications 15:8855.
• Kontopoulos, D.-G., Smith, T.P., Barraclough, T.G., and Pawar, S. (2020). Adaptive evolution shapes the present-day distribution of the thermal sensitivity of population growth rate. PLOS Biology 18(10):e3000894.
• Kontopoulos, D.-G., van Sebille, E., Lange, M., Yvon-Durocher, G., Barraclough, T.G., and Pawar, S. (2020). Phytoplankton thermal responses adapt in the absence of hard thermodynamic constraints. Evolution 74(4):775-790.

1B. Endotherms

Many endotherms have the ability to enter torpor (daily torpor, prolonged torpor, or hibernation) in response to challenging environmental conditions (e.g., low food resources, extreme temperatures). To shed light on the physiological, ecological, and environmental factors that promote evolutionary shifts in torpor use in mammalian and avian clades, I apply phylogenetic comparative methods to large torpor classification datasets.

Selected key publications:

• Kontopoulos, D.-G., Levesque, D.L., and Hiller, M. (2025). Numerous independent gains of daily torpor and hibernation across endotherms, linked with adaptation to diverse environments. Functional Ecology 39(3):824-839.

2. Signatures of environmental adaptation at the molecular level

2A. Enzyme structures

Orthologous enzymes tend to reflect the environmental conditions that their species experience, especially in ectotherms whose body temperature fully depends on the environment. To understand how the three-dimensional structures of enzymes change through adaptation to different environments, I combine molecular dynamics simulations with phylogenetic comparative methods.

Selected key publications:

• Kontopoulos, D.-G., Patmanidis, I., Barraclough, T.G., and Pawar, S. (2025). Changes in flexibility but not in compactness underlie the thermal adaptation of prokaryotic adenylate kinases. Evolution Letters 9(5):598-609.

2B. Genes

Genes associated with a particular trait (e.g., hibernation) may exhibit various evolutionary patterns across species, such as positive selection, evolutionary rate shifts, or even gene loss in lineages where the trait is also lost. Thus, I perform genome-wide screens for such molecular patterns to uncover genomic underpinnings of adaptation.

Selected key publications:

• Kontopoulos, D.-G., Ahmed, A.-W., Bein, B., Levesque, D.L., and Hiller, M. (2025). Comparative genomics indicate multiple genetic routes to the evolution of torpor in placental mammals. bioRxiv 2025.11.18.689136.

Social interactions are widespread in the animal kingdom because they can significantly improve the survival and reproductive success of individuals, influence the dynamics of entire populations, and their interactions with other species. We still have a poor understanding of the effects of environmental factors on collective behavior. To address this, I sample Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) from natural colonies and examine their collective behavior during experiments at different temperatures and humidity levels.