Welcome!
We are a group of integrative organismal biologists located in
the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Science at the University of Arizona.
Our research focuses on understanding how animals respond to environmental fluctuations and challenges, from developmental or maternal challenges experienced in early life, to broader ecological challenges related to resource availability and the social environment. We are interested in both the proximate and evolutionary drivers of these responses, with a particular focus on the role that host-associated microbiomes play in mediating these patterns.
Interested in joining the lab?
We are a fast-growing group and are looking for new lab members at all levels.
Please [contact Lauren] if you are interested in becoming part of our team.
Lab happenings
October 2025. Gabri and Ally have just returned from the Yukon, where they helped collect annual midden cone count data for the Kluane Red Squirrel Project. They also collected microbiome data on a set of red squirrel middens for Gabri's project looking at middens as microbial reservoirs for their red squirrel owners.
September 2025. The Petrullo Lab is thrilled to have received seed funding from the Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill to begin a field study of wild ground squirrels. Our goal is to understand how host microbial ecology may shape resilience and heat tolerance in desert-adapted small mammals. With these funds, we will begin trapping, tracking, and sampling sympatric species of ground squirrels endemic to the Sonoran desert with different life histories, and social systems. We hope that this work will shed light on how host-microbe interactions may facilitate divergent strategies for navigating challenging environments.
September 2025. We are celebrating official word of receiving a five-year NIH R35 (MIRA) grant from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences to study interactions between the gut microbiome and the brain in wild rodents. We are excited to pursue questions related to how integration of environmental cues by the neuroendocrine system shapes gut microbial communities, and what these processes may mean for organismal health, fitness, and resilience. This grant will support multiple graduate students, postdocs, and other project personnel, and we are looking for new lab members at all levels. Contact Lauren if interested.
August 2025. New paper! "Social microbial transmission in a solitary mammal" is now out in Ecology Letters. Read it here.
June 2025. Natalie has returned from her first field season in the Yukon during which she received training in core data collection and successfully completed her pilot data sampling for her dissertation. She was able to successfully collect over 70 (!) fecal samples from 25-day old squirrel pups, which will allow us to investigate heterogeneity in vertical transmission of microbiota from mothers to offspring in this population, and begin linking microbial variation to offspring phenotypes as they face the strongest survival bottleneck of a red squirrel's life - survival past the first winter.
May 2025. New paper! "Harbingers of change: towards a mechanistic understanding of anticipatory plasticity in animal systems" is now out in Functional Ecology and part of a special issue on the Causes and Consequences of Phenotypic Plasticity. Read it here.
April 2025. Huge congratulations to Natalie and Ally for both receiving Honorable Mentions for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in what was an extremely competitive year!
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April 2025. Congratulations to undergraduate researcher and Honor's student Abby Pearse for winning the People's Choice award at the EEB Undergraduate Research Fair!
March 2025. Lauren returned from a short stint in the field at Squirrel Camp. Days were spent traversing grid and making snowshoe trails for folks to get from midden to midden, putting colors into ear tags so we can ID individuals from afar the rest of the year, and trapping to see who made it through the winter.
April 2025. Congrats to Undergrad researcher McKenzie Matlock presented her work at the EEB Undergraduate Research Fair. McKenzie has been working on a project looking at at ecological drivers of variation in body condition in two sympatric species of Peromyscus. We are grateful to NSF NEON and the incredible team at the NEON Biorepository at ASU for their collaboration on this work, which is the start of our larger goal to leverage the temporal and spatial gradient of NEON data on the gut microbiomes of wild mice to ask questions about phylogenetic and ecological constraints on microbial flexiblity.
