LASER currently focuses on 4 different areas of research using tools from behavioral ecology, genomics, evolution, and neuroscience.
Evolution of recognition abilities
Recognition makes the world go round – imagine navigating through life not being able to tell who is who. Across the animal kingdom animals differ in the way that they recognize and differentiate among conspecifics.
Much of the work on in the lab focuses on understanding the evolution of facial individual recognition in the paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus. This species recently evolved the ability to recognize conspecifics using highly variable facial patterns. Current work seeks to understand the genetic and neural basis of this trait. With luck we will start to figure out how mutations in the genome lead to neural circuits for pattern recognition.
Evolution of individual identity signals
Recognition can only happen if individuals have distinctive phenotypes. We are especially interested in how social selection shapes patterns of phenotypic diversity in the traits used for individual recognition in both paper wasps and mice.
Active work in this area seeks to understand the genetic basis of color pattern diversity in the paper wasp Polistes fuscatus.
Animal signaling strategies
Many of the signals that animals produce carry costs – whether in terms of production, opportunity costs or because they make signalers more vulnerable to predators or parasites. How animals modulate their investments in signals and choose among signal types is of particular interest to the lab.
We are currently investigating these questions in house mice by examining how mice allocate effort to scent marking with energetically expensive protein pheromones.
Linking social behavior, genetics, neurobiology and physiology
Social interactions and physiology reciprocal influence each other. It is increasingly clear that social interactions have the potentially to greatly influence health, though models for studying the effects of complex societies on physiology are limited.
We are leveraging the power of the mouse model in new ways by combining studies of mice in the lab with studies of genetically diverse mice in small-scale mescosms and large naturalistic outdoor enclosures. These features allow us to conducted replicated experiments with complex societies in large spatial scales.
Evolution of recognition abilities
Recognition makes the world go round – imagine navigating through life not being able to tell who is who. Across the animal kingdom animals differ in the way that they recognize and differentiate among conspecifics.
Much of the work on in the lab focuses on understanding the evolution of facial individual recognition in the paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus. This species recently evolved the ability to recognize conspecifics using highly variable facial patterns. Current work seeks to understand the genetic and neural basis of this trait. With luck we will start to figure out how mutations in the genome lead to neural circuits for pattern recognition.
Evolution of individual identity signals
Recognition can only happen if individuals have distinctive phenotypes. We are especially interested in how social selection shapes patterns of phenotypic diversity in the traits used for individual recognition in both paper wasps and mice.
Active work in this area seeks to understand the genetic basis of color pattern diversity in the paper wasp Polistes fuscatus.
Animal signaling strategies
Many of the signals that animals produce carry costs – whether in terms of production, opportunity costs or because they make signalers more vulnerable to predators or parasites. How animals modulate their investments in signals and choose among signal types is of particular interest to the lab.
We are currently investigating these questions in house mice by examining how mice allocate effort to scent marking with energetically expensive protein pheromones.
Linking social behavior, genetics, neurobiology and physiology
Social interactions and physiology reciprocal influence each other. It is increasingly clear that social interactions have the potentially to greatly influence health, though models for studying the effects of complex societies on physiology are limited.
We are leveraging the power of the mouse model in new ways by combining studies of mice in the lab with studies of genetically diverse mice in small-scale mescosms and large naturalistic outdoor enclosures. These features allow us to conducted replicated experiments with complex societies in large spatial scales.