The Hamilton Lab
Chokma! Saholhchifoat Chris Hamilton. Chikashsha saya.
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being, evolved.”
Charles Darwin, 1859, On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection
Arthropod Systematics & Phylogenetics
The Hamilton Lab is in the Department of Entomology, Plant Pathology & Nematology at the University of Idaho. Our lab, and the University of Idaho, lives and works on the unceded homeland of the Nimi’ipuu (Nez Perce), Schitsu’umsh (Coeur d’Alene), Kalispel, Kootenai, Paiute, and Shoshone-Bannock peoples.
As the Arthropod Molecular Systematics lab, our research takes a modern systematics approach to establish hypotheses about the generation and maintenance of biodiversity. By integrating large amounts of genomic, morphometric, ecological, and behavioral data, we try to explain patterns across differing landscapes and time, as well as how biotic and abiotic factors have influenced spider and moth diversification.
About the PI
I consider myself a biodiversity researcher. That means I’m an evolutionary biologist who works to understand the organismal diversity on our planet by finding and describing new species, as well as understanding their evolutionary relationships. I’m an arachnologist, lepidopterist, treethinker, Chickasaw, Arsenal nut, hockey beer-leaguer, coach, and dad.
Driven by a passion to tell stories of our planet, my journey to biology came through photojournalism (my previous career before coming back to school). My experiences documenting the stories of diverse cultures complement my love of understanding the biological world around us. For me, biology is a tool to continue telling stories about ourselves and our planet.
As a Native person in academia, I want to blend the ways we tell stories by incorporating both TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) approaches and western science, when possible and appropriate. Combining the cultural and physical worlds is a natural transition, as our people are the original “natural historians”. We understood the land, its flora and fauna, and the interactions of these organisms, long before western science “discovered” them.
Mentoring Native students
As a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, I have a personal investment to engage and mentor fellow Native students. Tribal Nations are sovereign, legal, and political entities with their own powers of self-governance and self-determination. Because of this, one of my main goals is to work with the tribes to provide opportunities for the next generation to access and develop the skills and knowledge they deem necessary for strengthening Tribal sovereignty and self-determination.