Bret Payseur
Position title: Professor
Email: payseur@wisc.edu
Phone: 608-890-0867
Address:
Genetics and Medical Genetics
Speciation, Evolution of Extreme Phenotypes, Recombination
- Address
- 2428 Genetics/Biotech
- Education
- Ph.D., University of Arizona, (2003), Postdoctoral Research: Cornell University
- Lab Website
- http://payseur.genetics.wisc.edu/
- Department
- Genetics and Medical Genetics
- Research Interests
- Evolution of extreme phenotypes, genetic recombination, speciation, population genomics
- Research Fields
- Evolutionary Biology, Population Genetics, Quantitative Genetics, Genomics

Research Description:
Bret Payseur uses genetics and genomics to understand mechanisms of evolution. Payseur and his students are discovering how one species becomes two, how organisms adapt to new environments, and how meiotic recombination evolves – all from a genetic perspective. Payseur’s research focuses on natural variation in a powerful genetic model organism, the house mouse.
Representative Publications:
Search PubMed for more publications by Bret Payseur
Frayer, M. E., and B. A. Payseur (2024). Do genetic loci that cause reproductive isolation in the lab inhibit gene flow in nature? Evolution 78:1025-1038.
Stratton, J. D., M. J. Nolte, and B. A. Payseur (2023). Genetics of behavioural evolution in giant mice from Gough Island. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290:20222603.
Payseur, B. A., and P. Jing (2021). Genomic targets of positive selection in giant mice from Gough Island. Molecular Biology and Evolution 38:911-926.
Peterson, A. L., and B. A. Payseur (2021). Sex-specific variation in the genome-wide recombination rate. Genetics 217:iyaa019.
Nolte, M. J., P. Jing, C. N. Dewey, and B. A. Payseur (2020). Giant island mice exhibit widespread gene expression changes in key metabolic organs. Genome Biology and Evolution 12:1277-1301.
Wang, R. J., B. L. Dumont, P. Jing, and B. A. Payseur (2019). A first genetic portrait of synaptonemal complex variation. PLoS Genetics 15:e1008337.