The Animal Behavior Podcast

En esta conversación, Matthew habla con Dr. Ximena Bernal, profesora de biología en la Universidad Purdue. Hablan de la investigación de Ximena sobre espías en el sistema de comunicación de la rana túngara. Después del descanso, hablan sobre el viaje de Ximena como hablante nativa de español trabajando como científica en un campo cuyo idioma principal es el inglés y sus esfuerzos para aumentar la...

In this conversation, Matthew speaks with Dr. Ximena Bernal, professor of biological sciences at Purdue University. They discuss Ximena's research into spies in the túngara frog communication system. After the break, they talk about Ximena's journey as a native Spanish speaker working as a scientist in a field whose primary language is English and her efforts to increased communication b...

In this week's episode, Maren Vitousek joins the show to talk about stress and her work in tree swallows. She starts by describing what stress is and what it is not . Matthew and Maren talk about the development of the stress response and its long-term implications. Then Maren's talk about the tree swallow project that she co-directs and what her lab has learned from studying stress in t...

This week Matthew speaks with Jenny Tung , McArthur fellow and the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. They start out by discussing the mutual benefits that molecular biologists and behavioral ecologists can gain from bringing their methods and frameworks together. They discuss two examples of the power of that synergy from Jenny's work as a co-director of the...

In this episode, Matthew travels to South Africa to talk with legendary zoologist and behavioral ecologist, Tim Clutton-Brock. They discuss how Tim came to study meerkats and the logistical benefits of meerkats as a study system. Then they dig in to cooperative breeding and its implications for evolution. In the second half of the show, they discuss Tim's 50+ year career, how he has seen the...

In this episode, Matthew speaks with Robert Seyfarth , professor emeritus in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania. In the first half of the show, they discuss in detail some of the foundational playback experiments that Robert performed in partnership with his late wife Dorothy Cheney. These legendary experiments revealed fundamental discoveries about the kind of social know...

Matthew hosts a live episode of the podcast at the 2023 meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Portland, Oregon. The show features friends of the pod Swanne Gordon and Jeff Podos, as well as special guests Steve Nowicki and Ted Stankowich. Content relevant to this episode: 1. Buy books of poems written by Janie E. Bibbie , the poet from whom Swanne reads 2. See Kim Rosvall's flaming hula h...

In this episode,  Matthew speaks with Sara Lewis about her book, "Silent Sparks" and her career studying fireflies. They discuss the sexually selected behaviors that are so central to fireflies' lives.  After the break, they talk about Sara's conservation work focused on documenting firefly population dynamics and threat levels that different species face.  This week's Two...

In this episode,  Matthew speaks with Thore Bergman about Niko Tinbergen's 1963 paper "On Aims and Methods of Ethology." They discuss Tinbergen's four questions as well as additional context for each and Thore describes how he has applied Tinbergen's principles to his own work. After the break, they discuss a paper that Thore and Jacinta Beehner published last year, arguin...

In the first episode of Season 3, we kick off our new miniseries, "Foundations of Animal Behavior" in a conversation between Matthew and Darwin scholar and intellectual historian Dr. William Kimler . We recommend that you read Chapter 7 either before or after this conversation. Here is the version (1st edition) that William and Matthew reference, starting on page 207 of the text (page 11...

Matthew talks with Kate Laskowski about a recently published update to her work on the development of individuality in genetically identical organisms. If you missed the original episode, be sure to go check up Season 2 Episode 8! Read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-34113-y

In this episode, Amy speaks with guest Zuleyma Tang-Martinez , emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. They open by discussing the social function of individual odors and the potential factors driving the evolution of individual recognition systems in animals. Then, they chat about work by Zuleyma (and others) challenging Bateman's Principle, a widely accepted...

In this episode, Amy speaks with guest Andy Sih , a Distinguished ​​Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy within the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis. They open by discussing the concept of animal personalities (a.k.a 'behavioral syndromes' or 'consistent individual differences in behavior'). Then, they chat about fear gen...

In this episode, Matthew speaks with guest Kate Laskowski ( @KateLaskowski ), an Assistant Professor in the Department of Evolution, and Ecology at the University of California, Davis They discuss what it means for animals to display individuality, how frequent individual repeatable differences are, and Kate's work in Amazon mollies that attempts to identify the sources and consequences of in...

In this episode, Amy speaks with guest Gerry Carter ( @gerrygcarter ), an Assistant Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University. They open by discussing cooperation and conflict in animal social structures. Then, they dig into variation in individual food-sharing relationships in bats, and they chat about whether or not vampire bats show r...

ABS 2022 is just around the corner and The Animal Behavior Podcast will be there! Come meet us!

In this episode, Amy speaks with guest Karen Warkentin , a Professor of Biology and a Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Boston University. They open by discussing the adaptive value of phenotypic plasticity, particularly at critical moments in complex life cycles. Then, they dig into the mechanisms underlying environmentally-cued hatching in red-eyed treefrogs ( Agalychnis c...

In this episode, Amy speaks with guest Nora H. Prior ( @NhPrior ), a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. They open by discussing the many types of social relationships that animals experience throughout their lives, and the impact that these diverse social interactions may have on the involved individuals. Then, they dig into the neuroscience underlying...

In this episode, Matthew speaks with Jesse Goldberg (@jesseGlab) ,  Associate Professor and Robert R. Capranica Fellow in the neurobiology and behavior department at Cornell University. They first cover Jesse's perspectives on some basics of neurobiology-- what he identifies as a brain's function and the brain's role in creating predictions and controlling movement. They then discus...

In this episode, Matthew speaks with Swanne Gordon (@Swanne Gordon) ,  Assistant Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. They talk about diversity in both nature and in the biological sciences. The research focus of the conversation focuses on Swanne's experimental and modeling work to understand polymorphism among aposematic wood tiger moths, and the surprising outcomes t...

In this episode, Matthew speaks with Tamra Mendelson ( @tamram ), Professor of Biological Sciences at UMBC. They talk about Tamra's work studying sexual signal evolution. They discuss the processing bias hypothesis, with a focus on the importance of the ease of processing a signal on the receivers preference for signals. They talk about evidence that efficient processing has shaped human pref...

In this episode, Matthew speaks with Jenn Smith ( @JennSmithSocBeh ), associate professor of biology at Mills College. They talk about Jenn's work directing a long-term study of the social behavior of California ground squirrels, including the opportunities and risks presented by remote data collection technologies. They also discuss Jenn's work connecting animal behavior and sociologica...

Episode Summary:   In this episode, Amy speaks with Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy ( @AvispaTica ), a Research Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Biology at the University of Rochester. They discuss the selection pressures that favor the evolution of sociality, how brain architecture varies among individuals with different social roles, and brood parasitism in a...

Episode Summary: In this episode, Matthew speaks with Mike Ryan , the Clark Hubbs Regents Professor in Zoology in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas as well as a senior research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama. They focus their conversation around Mike's book, A Taste for the Beautiful. They discuss the túngara frog syst...

Bonus content to accompany Episode 9. We recommend listening to the full episode with Mike first before listening to this bonus content. Let us know what you think about this new bonus format at animalbehaviorpod@gmail.com