Pavitra Muralidhar
Assistant Professor
Department of Ecology and Evolution and the College
Pavitra Muralidhar’s research examines the consequences of sexual reproduction for genetic and phenotypic diversity. She uses mathematical modeling and simulations to investigate topics ranging from the initial evolution of sexual dimorphism to transitions between sex-determining mechanisms. She is especially interested in the evolutionary dynamics of sexual antagonism—the genetic conflict between the sexes over a shared genome—and the impact of this conflict on the genetic architecture of quantitative phenotypes. She is also currently investigating how sexual selection can contribute to the maintenance of genetically isolated species.
Her research has been published in Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Evolution, and Nature Ecology and Evolution. She was awarded the Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Naturalists.
Muralidhar holds a BA in biological sciences, magna cum laude, from Cornell University, and a PhD in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University. Most recently, she was a Center for Population Biology postdoctoral fellow and a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Davis.