The Yoder Lab at CSU Northridge

The Yoder Lab is part of the Department of Biology at California State University Northridge. Meet our current and past members on the People page, and find out what we’ve been up to recently on the News page.

We study coevolution of interacting species, particularly in mutualisms. We’re part of the Joshua Tree Genome Project, a multi-institution, NSF-funded collaboration to build genomic resources for Joshua tree, an icon of the Mojave Desert and an ecological keystone species that hosts a fascinating, highly specialized pollination mutualism.

You can read about our research, with links to relevant scientific papers, on the Projects page, or click through to individual research topics below. To discuss research opportunities, including undergraduate projects, graduate studies in biology at CSUN, and postdoctoral research, you can contact the principal investigator, Jeremy Yoder.

Mutualism at the limits

We’re studying how Joshua trees’ “textbook” mutualism with yucca moths has shaped their history of survival in extreme environments.

Modeling population health

We’re harnessing crowdsourced observations and machine learning to identify the environmental conditions species need to thrive.

Evolving, together

We’re synthesizing ecological and genetic studies to find how intimate interactions between species have shaped the diversification of life on Earth.

Projects in the Yoder Lab are supported by