Postdocs
Postdoc offices are in 2343 Storer Hall, Phone: 530-754-7837
Alan H. Krakauer
Visit Alan's Website -- e-mail Alan
I am broadly interested in behavioral and evolutionary questions, particularly related to the mechanistic, developmental, and evolutionary factors that shape avian social systems. My dissertation research focused on the mating system of the wild turkey, and understanding how subordinate males benefit from cooperative partnerships with other males. I used molecular measures of relatedness and paternity to show that kin selection can explain this apparently altruistic behavior; current direct and future direct benefits seem unlikely to account for the evolution of cooperative male courtship in this species. I also investigated how brood parasitism and spatial patterns of parentage determine offspring relatedness, and then how this could influence the ways in which these coalitions of relatives might form. My current project involves sexual signaling in greater sage-grouse. Sage-grouse are a lekking species in which females seem free to choose amongst many males to obtain optimal genes for their offspring. Here we are asking three basic questions: 1) what signals are females using to assess male quality, 2) what can males do to optimize the signal sent to females, and 3) how do environmentally-mediated changes in sound propagation influence male mating success.
Former Postdocs
Diane J. Blackwood
Diane worked in the lab from February 2005 to December 2006 investigating the potential impacts of noise from energy development on acoustic communication in Greater sage-grouse in Wyoming (details).
