Coastal plain swamp sparrow (2005)

 

White-throated sparrow chicks, day 6 (2006)

 

 

About

 

I am a second-year graduate student in Steve Nowicki's lab with interests in animal communication and behavior. Currently I am planning to study the role of mating signals in sexual selection, under the broader contexts of communication systems, signal perception and population dynamics.*

 

My senior thesis at the University of Maryland focused on geographic vocal variation in two subspecies of swamp sparrow. I found that songs of inland (Melospiza georgiana georgiana) and coastal plain (M. g. nigrescens) swamp sparrows differ along several acoustic parameters and that males respond more strongly to songs of their own subspecies than to songs of the other subspecies. The extent of song variation and discrimination suggests continued divergence, possibly as a consequence of morphological differences arising from adaptations to their respective habitats. [PDF: Liu, I.A., B. Lohr, B. Olsen, and R. Greenberg. 2008. Macrogeographic vocal variation in subspecies of swamp sparrow. Condor 110:102-109.]

 

After graduating, I assisted in fieldwork for a doctoral project investigating the effects of hormones on parenting behavior in white-throated sparrows. Finally, I spent most of 2007 monitoring the population demographics of Florida scrub-jays at Archbold Biological Station, a great place to hold a research internship before beginning grad school.

 

I worked again with swamp sparrows in summer 2008 to examine how audience effects (changes in signaling behavior due to the presence of multiple receivers) guide male vocal responses in territorial interactions. You can see field pictures, as well as photos from previous seasons, on my thoroughly unprofessional blog here.

 

*This sentence will probably be edited a million times before I settle on an actual research topic. Stay tuned.

 

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Florida scrub-jays being chilly (2007)