I teach organismal biology courses, mentor students and conduct primary research at the intersection of vertebrate behavior, physiology and neurobiology.
As an integrative biologist I seek to understand how animals conduct their lives in their intimate natural environments. My lab primarily studies how hormones and the brain generate variation in behavior and we connect this variation to fitness consequences in the wild. We are especially interested in differences within- and among-individuals. We study (co)variation at these two levels and use sexual behavior (vocal, auditory), coping behavior (exploration) and (neuro)endocrine (steroid and peptide hormone systems) traits as the heritable yet labile phenotypic characters of interest. Wild songbirds and frogs serve as our model organisms.
When I’m not in the lab or outdoors, you can find me experimenting in the kitchen and adventuring with my family.