Lab Interests



Archocentrus nigrofasciatus
Convict cichlid

Kryptolebias marmoratus
Mangrove rivulus

Xiphophorus helleri
Green swordtail

Lythrypnus dalli
Bluebanded goby
My laboratory uses freshwater, brackish, and marine fish species as model
systems to understand complex social behavior. We target multiple,
interdependent factors that could contribute to the immense behavioral
variation that exists among individuals within a population. These include
the physical and social environments, hormone biosynthesis pathways,
activation of neural circuits, and gene expression patterns.

The research that my laboratory conducts is driven by conceptual,
theoretical, and technological advances in fields as diverse as
ecology, evolutionary biology, neuroendocrinology, physiology
and animal behavior. We aim to address fundamental questions in
behavioral biology with a fusion of field research, behavioral
experimentation, pharmacological manipulations, and neuroendocrine
assays. The topics of greatest interest to our laboratory are aggression,
dominance, sexual plasticity, reproductive allocation, and social
eavesdropping. Behavioral variation among individuals of a population,
regardless of how it is expressed, is embedded in an environmental
context. We therefore prioritize exposing our animals to situations that
they might readily encounter under natural circumstances. Our long-term
goal is to compile a powerful, integrative set of data that helps us to
understand how extraordinary levels of behavioral variation (or plasticity
in general) emerge in animal populations.


Click the fish pictures for more detailed descriptions of research interests. Keep in
mind that some research questions are addressed in more than one of these species!