Areas of Research

Broadly, I am interested in how natural and sexual selection interact to shape signaling and mate choice in animals.

As a member of the Derryberry Lab at Tulane University and the University of Tennessee, I led a project involving song, cognitive skills, and female preference in zebra finches (for more details, please click the "foraging assays and mate choice" link below). I also worked on a project that examined the behavioral and transcriptomic effects of heat stress in zebra finches.

I am currently a PhD student in the Nowicki Lab at Duke University. My present research explores the effects of  recently-acquired infection on sexual signaling in a seasonally breeding bird, the swamp sparrow. I am testing the extent to which males are able to mask behavioral evidence of disease when acquiring a mate. Please see "sickness communication and song", below, for more details.