Mingzi Xu

Research in my lab focuses on the evolution and genetics of mating behaviors, especially mating preferences and mate choices. By transcending boundaries of field-based behavioral ecology and lab-based quantitative genetics and genomics, we aim to answer fundamental questions about evolution and genomics of mating preferences that will eventually help us causally link selective forces in real natural populations to variation in preference phenotypes to the underlying genetic and genomic mechanisms.

• 2022- Assistant professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota
• 2019-2021 President's Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesot
• 2015-2019 Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University
• 2014 Ph.D. Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma