Within the realm of animal behavior and behavioral ecology, I am most interested the development and learning of complex behavioral traits, and the effect these factors have on the organism’s fitness.  For my graduate research, I plan to expand upon the general question of how and why animals make the copulatory choices they do by examining how early experience influences a bird’s eventual extra-pair behavior. Although extra-pair copulations (EPCs) and extra-pair fertilizations (EPFs) have been extensively studied from the perspective of their effects on maternal and offspring fitness, far less attention has been given to explaining why individual females vary in their tendency to produce EPF young, and little if anything is known about how this variation arises developmentally. I plan to to examine a factor that could affect the early development of this behavior: maternal hormonal effects.

It is clear that EPC behavior in many species is affected by testosterone.  However, this effect appears to be largely activational - adult males with higher testosterone have higher rates of EPCs.  Could testosterone be acting organizationally as well?  Could mothers be biasing the likelihood that their chicks will ultimately engage in EPCs via yolk hormone transmission?  Do females that engage in EPCs have a different hormone complement than females who remain faithful to their social mate? Do they pass differing hormone levels to their eggs? And, if so, what effects do these hormones have on the chicks’ future EPC behavior?  The questions can be addressed both through observational and manipulative studies of hormone levels.