Eric Palkovacs is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz and director of the Fisheries Collaborative Program. His research addresses basic questions in evolutionary ecology and applied questions in conservation biology and fisheries management, combining surveys of genetic, phenotypic, and ecological variation in nature with field and laboratory experiments to test the mechanisms underlying observed patterns. His work focuses on bi-directional interactions occurring between ecology and evolution in nature and how these ecological changes feed back to shape the trajectory of evolution.