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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
August 2023 - present
Education
August 2014 - August 2019
Field of study
- Biological Sciences
August 2008 - August 2013
Publications
Publications (33)
Sexually selected traits are hypothesized to be honest signals of individual quality due to the costs associated with their maintenance, development, and/or production. Testosterone, a sex steroid associated with the development and/or production of sexually selected traits, has been proposed to enforce the honesty of sexually selected traits via i...
Building on the predictions of state‐dependent life‐history theory, telomeres are hypothesized to either correlate with or function as an adaptive, proximate mediator of an individual's behaviour and life‐history strategy. To further understand the relationship between telomeres, behaviour and life‐history strategies, we measured male behaviour, te...
Our understanding of state-dependent behaviour is reliant on identifying physiological indicators of condition. Telomeres are of growing interest for understanding behaviour as they capture differences in biological state and residual lifespan. To understand the significance of variable telomere lengths for behaviour and test two hypotheses describ...
Given that population dynamics of birds are known to be sensitive to high fledgling mortality, a comprehensive understanding of the environmental factors that drive variation in fledgling survival is essential to avian conservation. We quantified multiple aspects of the Wood Thrush postfledging period using breeding and radio-telemetry data collect...
Urbanization reflects a major form of environmental change impacting wild birds globally. Whereas urban habitats may provide increased availability of water, some food items, and reduced predation levels compared to rural, they can also present novel stressors including increased light at night, ambient noise, and reduced nutrient availability. Urb...
Social information is widely used by animals to inform decisions made in a variety of contexts. Less well understood is how the state of the information source influences social information use and if social information informs migratory decisions. Furthermore, most studies on social information use in the context of migration focus on obligate mig...
The neotropical manakins (family Pipridae) provide a great opportunity for integrative studies of sexual selection as nearly all of the 51 species are lek-breeding, an extreme form of polygyny, and highly sexually dimorphic both in appearance and behavior. Male courtship displays are often elaborate and include auditory cues, both vocal and mechani...
Venom is an integral feeding trait in many animal species. Although venom often varies ontogenetically, little is known about the proximate physiological mediators of venom variation within individuals. The glucocorticoid hormone corticosterone can alter transcription and activation of proteins, including homologues of snake venom components such a...
Physiological preparations for migration generally reflect migratory strategy. Migrant birds fuel long-distance flight primarily with lipids, but carrying excess fuel is costly; thus, the amount of fat deposited prior to departure often reflects the anticipated flight duration or distance between refueling bouts. Seasonal pre-migratory deposition o...
The endocrine system is known to mediate responses to environmental change and transitions between different life stages (e.g., a non-breeding to a breeding life stage). Previous works from the field of environmental endocrinology have primarily focused on changes in circulating hormones, but a comprehensive understanding of endocrine signaling pat...
Social networks can vary in their organization and dynamics, with implications for ecological and evolutionary processes. Understanding the mechanisms that drive social network dynamics requires integrating individual‐level biology with comparisons across multiple social networks.
Testosterone is a key mediator of vertebrate social behaviour and ca...
Host-associated microbial communities can influence the overall health of their animal hosts, and many factors, including behavior and physiology, can impact the formation of these complex communities. Bacteria within these communities can be transmitted socially between individuals via indirect (e.g., shared environments) or direct (e.g., physical...
Steroid hormones regulate reproductive investment and play a critical role in coordinating reproductive responses to both short and long-term environmental change. Laboratory studies typically examine the mechanistic relationships among steroids and reproductive processes under controlled conditions and may fail to identify any seasonal patterns in...
Many studies have identified the reproductive benefits of cooperative behaviors, yet few have identified the mechanisms that underlie these behaviors. Mechanistic studies can inform our understanding of why some individuals are more or less cooperative, as well as identify the physiological constraints imposed upon the evolution of reproductive tra...
Behavioral tradeoffs occur when the expression of one behavior detracts from the expression of another. Understanding the proximate mediators of behavioral tradeoffs is important as these tradeoffs can act as potential constraints on evolutionary responses to selection. Here, we describe the tradeoff between cooperation and competition faced by spe...
Stable cooperation requires plasticity whereby individuals are able to express competitive or cooperative behaviors depending on social context. To date, however, the physiological mechanisms that underlie behavioral variation in cooperative systems are poorly understood. We studied hormone-mediated behavior in the wire-tailed manakin (Pipra filica...
Social networks can vary in their organization and dynamics, with implications for ecological and evolutionary processes. Understanding the mechanisms that drive social network dynamics requires integrating individual-level biology with comparisons across multiple social networks.
Testosterone is a key mediator of vertebrate social behavior and can...
Metachrosis, or color change, in reptiles is used for thermoregulation, crypsis, and many other purposes. The mechanism and function of metachrosis remain unknown for many species, however, especially snakes. Anecdotal observations suggest that some snake species,
including rattlesnakes, undergo varying degrees of color change when captured and con...
Emergent diseases may result in population declines by inducing mortality directly or through sublethal effects on host reproduction. Snake fungal disease (SFD) is an emerging threat to biodiversity, but the sublethal impacts of disease on host fitness are poorly characterized. The cryptic nature of most snakes makes direct assessment of the fitnes...
Stable social partnerships require physiological mechanisms that maintain a balance between competition and cooperation. Although the endocrine system is known to facilitate competitive behavior, we know very little about how steroid hormones affect cooperation and the stability of partnerships. Here, we examine how testosterone (T) modulates socia...
Studies of birds have greatly advanced our understanding of how testosterone modulates complex phenotypes, specifically its role in mediating male reproductive and associated behaviors. Yet most of the foundational studies have been limited to northern latitude breeding species despite the fact that they represent only a small fraction of worldwide...
Obtaining baseline hormone samples can be challenging because circulating hormone levels often change rapidly due to the acute stress of capture. Although field protocols are established for accurately sampling baseline glucocorticoid concentrations, fewer studies have examined how common sampling techniques affect androgens levels. Indeed, many st...
Estrogens are important regulators of reproductive physiology including sexual signal expression and vitellogenesis. For the regulation to occur, the hormone must bind and activate receptors in target tissues, and expression of the receptors can vary by sex and/or season. By simultaneously comparing circulating hormone levels with receptor expressi...
Seasonal constraints on the timing and intensity of reproductive events shape observed variation in life history strategies across latitudes. Selection acts on the endocrine mechanisms that underlie reproductive investment. It is therefore important to examine the seasonal relationship between hormones and reproduction in geographically and phyloge...
The level of parental investment in free-living offspring varies greatly within and among vertebrate taxa, and the mechanisms that mediate investment are likely targets of selection in the evolution of reproductive strategies. In mammalian and avian systems, individual investment is adjusted according to parental energetic status, and regulatory me...
Snake fungal disease (SFD) is an emerging threat to snake populations intheUnited States.Fungalpathogens are oftenassociated with a physiological stress responsemediated by the hypothalamopituitary- adrenal axis (HPA), and afflicted individuals may incur steep coping costs. The severity of SFD can vary seasonally; however, little is knownregarding...
Phenotypic plasticity contributes to intraspecific variation in traits of many animal species. Venom is an integral trait to the success and survival of many snake species, and potential plasticity in venom composition is important to account for in the context of basic research as well as in human medicine for treating the various symptoms of snak...
In the face of global change, free-ranging organisms are expected to experience more unpredictable stressors. An understanding of how organisms with different life history strategies will respond to such changes is an integral part of biodiversity conservation. Corticosterone (CORT) levels are often used as metrics to assess the population health o...
Hydration is a critical element for many physiological processes in vertebrates. While it seems intuitive that drought is stressful to animals, studies examining drought are typically observational and do not explicitly assess how the hydration state of study subjects influences their physiology and behavior. We examined how hydration affects sever...
Manakins of the family Pipridae are known for performing complex courtship displays at leks. These complex displays have evolved in association with strong reproductive skew, suggesting individual differences in courtship behavior exist. By measuring components of hormone regulatory networks, one may be able to elucidate the proximate mediators of...
Glucocorticoids can play a critical role in modulating life-history trade-offs. However, studying the effects of glucocorticoids on life-history often requires experimentally elevating plasma glucocorticoid concentrations for several weeks within normal physiological limits and without repeated handling of the animal. Recently, implants made of bee...
Relative nestling condition, typically measured as nestling mass or as an index including nestling mass, is commonly purported to correlate with fledgling songbird survival. However, most studies directly investigating fledgling survival have found no such relationship. We weighed feces and stomach contents of nestling golden-winged warblers (Vermi...
Questions
Questions (3)
I know the manufacturer says 1 year, but still curious what other people's experience has been.
Thanks!
Males of my study species exhibit a delayed plumage maturation where they obtain adult/definitive plumage after their third molt. Second-year individuals or those in their second molt cycle will have a mix of sub-adult/formative plumage and adult/definitive plumage. Lots of variation exists among individuals. I am looking to quantify this variation in the field using digital photography. Can anyone reccommend a good reference that describes the technique or share a protocol that will work under harsh field conditions?
Thanks!
Hello all,
I am currently trying to measure avian telomere lengths using qPCR. I am using a very similar technique to the one described in
Criscuolo, F. et al. Real-time quantitative PCR assay for measurement of avian telomeres. J. Avian Biol. 40, 342–347 (2009).
I extracted my DNA using the Gentra puregene Blood kit. This is a different extraction technique to the one used in the paper (they use the DNAeasy kits). One major difference between these two methods is the DNA is cut into smaller pieces with the DNAeasy kit.
My primers are the same as those used in that paper, but I am using DNA from a different species.
After running 6 standards (starting at 40 ng/ul with a 50% dilution, range: 40ng to 1.25 ng/ul) the efficiencies are very high, 150%-183%. There are no visible primer-dimer formations in the melt curve.
Does anyone have any suggestions for getting my efficiencies within the acceptable range?
Thanks,
Ben
