Environmental Science at Syracuse University - Research Projects

BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY

Research in the my laboratory currently focuses on the role of experience in the type of current behavior displayed by an organism. Early models in behavioral ecology assumed organisms "knew" the costs and benefits of alternative possible behaviors, but that obviously is unlikely in most situations. However, organisms can acquire information about potential costs and benefits and adjust their behavior to reflect current best estimates. To understand how experience influences ongoing behavior we need information on how multiple experiences are integrated and how they influence what the organism does in a particular situation. Experience can be integrated via learning (learning curves) or more transient hormonal changes.

We currently are examining how previous fighting experience influences contest behavior. This requires information on integration of past experiences by the contestants and how this influences the behavior of each during a contest. Our model organisms are small, very aggressive fish (genus Rivulus). We are developing a collaboration with a colleague in Oklahoma to begin work on the possible hormonal mediators of the behavioral changes. We have developed models for how experiences are integrated and for how the integrated experiences of the opponents quantitatively predict probabilities of an individual winning in a contest. Our work in the near future will test these models against obvious alternatives.

Students in the laboratory are encouraged to design their own project in some area of behavioral ecology or population and conservation biology. Some of these projects are sufficiently broad in scope that the students have co-advisors for their research. Examples of some recent student projects include: learning in species and mate recognition in a fish; interaction between plants, aphids and ants; female oviposition behavior in a leaf beetle; determinants of subgroup formation in foraging monkeys; and the role of dispersal and colonization in maintaining a rare yeast species in a community of cactus-inhabiting yeasts.