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Drs.
Meredith J. West & Andrew P. King (Roy
in the middle).
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 Francisco
Magdaleno Flores,
fmagdale@indiana.edu
My
research focuses on the music-language relationship. There are
fundamental differences between both phenomena, but I am interested
in examining how the behavioral and mental capacities for language
and music processing overlap with the mechanisms underlying vocal
communication.
Even if music is not a precursor to language and is solely exaptive,
commonalities between the two can provide crucial insights about the
evolution of language and the emergence of our speech capacity. In
order to achieve this, I want to examine the influence
social-cognitive pressures have on the development of vocal
communication in human and non-human species. And the Animal
Behavior Farm and Vocal Development Lab provide the perfect avenue
to study the development of human infant prelinguistic vocalizations
and the song of the avian species, Molothrus ater --the
brown-headed cowbird!
Are the commonalities shared by music and language superficial? Or
is there depth to their resemblance? Whatever the answer, it’s an
exciting question, indeed. |
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 Rebekka
Dohme,
redohme@indiana.edu
As an aspiring
ethologist, it has always been important to me to study any behavior
of interest in an ecologically meaningful context. At Indiana
University, Drs. West and King have created a wonderful facility in
which the socially adept brown-headed cowbird and its behavior can
be observed closely without sacrificing ecological validity.
My research
interests center on the subtler communicative aspects of social
behavior. I have worked with multiple animal species, including
African clawed frogs, zebra finches, and domesticated dogs. In both
African clawed frogs and zebra finches, the female vocal repertoire
has been greatly ignored by behavioral researchers because it is a
lot less complex than that of the male. Many times, however, it is
the subtler female communicative cues that enable social
interactions such as reproduction, thus driving the evolution of the
species.
During my zebra
finch work at Columbia University, I came across a female behavior
similar to what Drs. West and King and Dr. Goldstein have famously
described as the “wingstroke” – a song-shaping technique employed by
non-singing females to help develop the male song. At Indiana
University’s Animal Behavior Farm, I will investigate the wingstroke
in cowbird females of all ages and social preferences in order to
study the development and organization of this evidently vital
social behavior. |
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Gregory Kohn, gmkohn@umail.iu.edu
Traditionally the inheritance of behavior was thought to be
primarily a function of the individual’s genes. However organisms
often inherit more then just genes from their parents. Aspects of
the parent’s environment, including their peers, are often passed on
to their offspring as well (see
West and King 1987). Even relatively hardwired behaviors require
environmental inputs provided by parents and other conspecifics in
order to develop functionally. Therefore understanding social
conditions during the development may provide insights into the
evolution of behavior. Animals can also exchange information between
individuals and across generations through social learning.
Therefore social conditions during development can determine what
individuals learn as they move through ontogeny. Variation in the
social conditions could influence what individuals learn from others
(and the social learning strategies individuals employ) and
therefore lead to differences in behaviors between populations. For
instance, substantial geographic variation in cowbird courtship
patterns exists in wild populations. Studies in captive cowbirds
have shown that these differences in courtship behaviors can be
replicated in a single generation by altering social compositions in
groups. Stable variations of socially transmitted behaviors over
generations can be regarded as an example of a traditional or
cultural behavior. Developmental plasticity, as exemplified by the
variation in learned behaviors from others throughout ontogeny, can
therefore influence the maintenance of animal traditions in a
population.
My research focuses on how the social environment shapes the
development and evolution of behavior in animals. Understanding how
an individual’s social environment provides information during
development may provide insights into the evolution of behavior. I
am interested in how information is culturally transmitted through
generations and the strategies that individuals employ to gather and
distribute information in large groups. My research will investigate
how females influence the development and transmission of song and
mate preferences in cowbirds (Molthrus ater), Females, who do
not sing, have been shown to influence the development of male song
used during courtship. Behavioral responses provided by females,
such as wing strokes, are used by males to guide the development of
their song structure. Recent studies have also suggested that female
cowbirds may need to learn a variety of social skills. Thus, females
may utilize other female responses to song to gauge each other’s
song and mate preferences. I will take a two-fold approach by
investigating the mechanisms and transmission of song preference
within females and its influence on the development of male
courtship behavior. Altering the social developmental conditions in
different flocks may influence female preference for song, and
result in changes in male courtship. Different courtship traditions
may be maintained by inheriting similar social conditions over
generations.
In previous work, I have looked at social
learning strategies in the guppy (Poecilia reticulata) in Simon
Reader’s lab at Utrecht University. Specifically, I conducted
experiments to determine if guppies could recognize and
preferentially copy successful demonstrators. I have also looked at
the influence of nutrition on the development of personality types
in Great Tits (Parus major) at the Netherlands Institute for Ecology
with Dr. Kees van Oers. At the Netherlands Institute for Ecology, I
conducted fieldwork looking at the different food types provisioned
to birds in early development and there influences on the emergence
of different personality types. I have also participated in research
looking at courtship behavior in beetles at Doug Emlen’s Lab, and at
the University of Montana, and social learning in jackdaws at Konrad
Lorenz Research Station in
Grünau, Austria.
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Sachiko
Koyama, PhD. Research Associate contact
sakoyama@indiana.edu
Sachi's CV
 I am interested in mechanisms of
communication and the influence of social factors on behavior. I
have studied social effects on behavior in mice, Japanese monkeys
and birds. I am currently excited about unraveling the behaviors of
cowbirds and discovering how the cowbird uses visual signals in
social interactions. This wonderful creature is so small and
of course everybody will think that birds are far way different from
primates, but what I think is that “Oh boy, they are just like
Japanese monkeys!”, which means they have very social relationships
and dominance relationships among individuals, just like Japanese
monkeys and many other social animals including humans. In
social animals, the maintenance of the group cohesiveness is kept
(or tried to be kept) by confirming the dominance and intimacy
relationships of each other by the frequent ritualistic social
behaviors, just like the dancing behaviors of cowbirds.
In my previous work, I have found
that sperm activities are different depending on social status in
mice (Koyama and Kamimura, 1999) and such differences diminish by
vomeronasalectomy (Koyama and Kamimura, 2003), which suggests the
pheromonal control of sperm activities among male mice. Female
mice odors increase the number of sperm in male mice (Koyama and
Kamimura, 2000), which suggest the pheromonal control of
spermatogenesis by female odors in mice. I published a book on
olfactory communication in animals (Koyama, 2008) and I am very
interested in continuing in this direction. We now know that such
communication using odors can be possible in humans and birds too,
although we also know that olfactory systems in humans and birds are
not well developed. Studies on the olfactory communications in
animals like mice which possess acute olfactory sense and the full
genome known will provide further understanding on olfactory
communication and studies on animals like human and birds will
provide further prospective on the possible hidden use of olfactory
communication in such animals. (I developed a portable
phase-contrast microscope in collaboration with P-Tech Co, Ltd.,
which is convenient to use in the field for the observation of sperm
of wild animals. If your are interested, please contact me)
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Another subject I have
investigated is the history of animals in human culture. I
published a book on the history of keeping pet birds and the
history of street performances showing tricks in Japan,
China, and UK (Koyama, 1999). In Japan, varied tits (parus
varius) were used (right image). The illustration to the
left is from a book on bird-keeping which was published in
1710 (“Yobukotori”). This illustration shows how
people kept birds in 18th century in Japan.
The large bird cage in the center is for varied tit with the
special equipment for training tricks. In the upper
right side there is a cage for raising Japanese bush warbler
(Cettia diphone) to which a child is giving food. It
was common to hand raise Japanese bush warblers and train
them to sing in the way fashionable at that time by using a
tutor
 bird.
The image to the left is a bush warbler and
to the right a street performer showing tricks using varied
tits in 17th to 19th century. Above
the street performer
is a photo of a sub-species of varied tit (Parus
varius owstoni) from Miyake Island, so it has a little
darker cheek and larger size than those of the varied tits
of mainland. In the aviary of my house in Tokyo,
Japan. |
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I am now planning to expand this study
further on birds with functional role like those used for hunting or
kept to be used as meat or for laying eggs in human cultures.
We share our lives with many animals
as the source of food, the help of labour, the
guard of house, a method of transportation, and even as a
companions. I am hoping through these studies to a better
understanding of human beings through the historical relationship
with other animals.
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RECENT ALUMNI
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 Jennifer
L. Miller, Assistant Professor Illinois Institute
of Technology: jmille38@iit.edu
I study the
development of communication and social behavior in complex social
networks. A variety of species, including both human infants and
nonhuman animals have to navigate and learn about their social
environment during the first couple of years (and beyond) to become
effective communicators. I seek to understand the social mechanisms
by using social network analysis to understand the social structures
responsible for effective information transfer and communicative
development.
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Julie Gros-Louis, Ph.D. Assistant Professor University of Iowa
Department of
Psychology contact:
jgroslou@indiana.ed
My research integrates perspectives from
ecological psychology and ecological developmental biology to
investigate communicative function and to explore the origins of social
learning. To understand communicative origins, it is necessary to study
organism-environment interactions during development to reveal the rich
set of environmental factors that drive change. I currently conduct
research on communicative development in human infants to understand the
proximate influences that produce developmental variation. Because I
view social environment is a key mechanism to shaping and sustaining
developmental change, I study social interactions between infants and
caretakers. I use a combination of experimental and observational
techniques to investigate potential moment-to-moment influences on
communicative development. My prior research on wild white-faced
capuchin monkeys and brown-headed cowbirds heavily influence my current
research program. My dissertation research explored proximate influences
on food-associated call production and recipients’ responses to the
calls. My research revealed that when considering evolutionary origins
of calls, researchers must investigate independently call function from
the perspective of the sender and the receiver. One of my postdoctoral
projects explored female nonvocal responses to male song in flocks,
revealing group-level reactions to females’ communicative signals. The
results of this study showed that it is important to consider natural
environments and conduct micro-levels of analysis of senders’ and
receivers’ behavior when exploring possible social influences on
behavioral and communicative development. Taken together, my prior
research projects influence the methodologies and theoretical viewpoints
in my current research, with the ultimate goal of formulating a model of
communicative development that focuses on dynamic interactions in
organism-environment systems. |
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Grace
Freed-Brown (with Sylvia),
Graduate
student University of Pennsylvania
Winner of the 2005 Cheryl Burnham Buhler Award for outstanding
undergraduate research
contact:
gfreedbr@sas.upen.edu
Grace's
Thesis:
Female influence in the
Brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater): An investigation of
emerging social ecologies
At the Animal Behavior Farm, I became interested in female
communication and female contributions to social systems. Females
are understudied because they are thought to be a receiver of
information, not a sender and therefore do not influence the patterns
exhibited by the group. Also, their behaviors are generally low
frequency and hard to observe. However, I believe that female
sociality defines social networks in the cowbird. My work indicates that
females can also shape appropriate courtship behavior in males. My
thesis investigating these issues. My major conclusions from the
study were: 1) Juvenile and adult females reacted differently to
juvenile males. 2) The adult females changed how they interact
around juvenile males when juvenile females are present. 3) There
was individual variation in behavior in both juvenile and adult females.
4) The different social patterns of the females were not attributable to
the juvenile males. My studies also indicates that female behavior
and social abilities are not innate. I use directed graphs to
investigate social networks and how individual traits may change a
social network. I hope to continue studying the role of the
female, early social experience and its effects on juvenile and adult
behavior, and how social networks shape development by controlling
the flow of information in a social group. |
This directed graph shows how the individuals present
alter the social structure. The network on the left is a group
containing adult females and juvenile males. The blue lines
indicate female-female (FF) contacts. The red lines indicate
male-male (MM) contacts. The green lines indicate female-male (FM)
contacts. The thickness of the line indicates the number of
contacts. The network on the right shows a group containing adult
females, juvenile females and juvenile males. By looking at these
graphs we can see, and confirm with statistics, that adult females
change the way they interact with juvenile males when juvenile females
are present. As we can see, there are higher activity levels, more
FM contacts and a tighter social group in the network on the right.
There are almost two distinct groups based on age and gender in the left
network, with only a few FM contacts. These graphs reflect data
taken from my thesis |
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David J. White, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Wilfrid Laurier University
Department of
Psychology
website:
https://sites.google.com/site/whitesocialbehaviourlab/home
contact:
dwhite@wlu.ca
My work takes an ecological and evolutionary approach to study how the social environment can influence learning and development of functionally important behaviour and how cultural transmission can act as a system of behavioural inheritance. My earlier work investigated
how social factors could modify animals’ inherent mate choice preferences. Studying Japanese quail, Coturnix japonica, I found that females show enhanced preferences for males that are observed mating with other females. In comparison, male quail judge females to be less
attractive if they are observed mating with other males. Social modifiability of mate preferences has the potential to influence sexual selection pressure on mate choice and epigamic characteristics.
More recently I have taken an interest in the product and process of social development. The research program involves studying
birds in large outdoor aviaries and manipulating groups using naturally
occurring variation in social experience. Go to Dave's website to learn about his current research interests.
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Mike in the lab where he generally can be found |
Michael H. Goldstein, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Cornell University
Department of Psychology
contact:
mhg26@cornell.edu
http://babylab.psych.cornell.edu
http://www.psych.cornell.edu/people/Faculty/mhg26.html
My research focuses on the development of vocal
communication via the interaction of basic perceptual mechanisms with
consistent structure in the social environment. In both songbirds and human
infants, early vocal behavior is an instrument of social learning. By
making sounds and observing the reactions of others, infants learn the
contingencies that define communicative interaction. Social and vocal
learning, however, are rarely investigated as part of the same system. My
present studies view the infant as taking an active role in its own
development and introduce new paradigms for understanding the origins of
communicative skills.
For example, the prelinguistic vocalizations of human
infants consistently capture the attention of mothers. In playback
experiments, mothers use vocal cues over visual information to guide their
responses to infants. Additional studies reveal that infants use social
feedback from mothers to build more developmentally advanced forms of
vocalizations. Feedback from caregivers thus provides reliable cues about
the consequences of vocalizing. These cues serve to facilitate infants’
acquisition of the basic building blocks of speech. |
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Mike at play with a critical collaborator |
In studies of adults and infants from 4 – 13 months
of age, my research continues to explore the mechanisms underlying social
influences on vocal learning. To better understand the connections between
later social and vocal development, I am also investigating how older
infants use social information to learn words.
As a result of publishing in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, my research has gained international
attention in the popular press. For example, you can listen to my NPR
interview about social influences on vocal learning:
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1284660 (the file
requires Real Player).
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Todd
with Mina at House Mountain State Natural Area |
Todd Freeberg, Ph.D.
Associate Professor University of
Tennessee
Department of
Psychology
Animal Behavior
and Developmental Research Areas
contact:
tfreeber@utk.edu
For further information, please contact me by accessing
my website at the link below.
http://psychology.utk.edu/people/freeberg.html |
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Tufted
titmouse
Carolina
chickadee |
My primary research aim
is to understand how social processes – at both developmental and
evolutionary levels – influence communicative development. I am currently
testing the relationship between social and vocal complexity in Carolina
chickadees, tufted titmice, and related species (the Paridae). Many of these
species have complex and dynamic social structures and also possess some of
the most structurally complicated vocal repertoires in birds. I use a range
of techniques to understand social and vocal behavior in these species, from
non-manipulative observations and recordings to playback experiments in
field settings, to studies of social development in groups in
semi-naturalistic aviary settings and in individuals in sound-isolation
chambers.
A recent pubication:
TODD M. FREEBERG & JEFFREY
R. LUCAS
Receivers respond differently
to chick-a-dee calls varying in note composition in Carolina chickadees,
Poecile carolinensis
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Marianne analyzing bird
song at the B&O multi-use trail in Ridgeland, OH. |
Marianne S. Engle, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Muskingum College, New Concord, OH.
Teaching is my primary focus at Muskingum College where I have taught the
following courses: Introductory Psychology, Behavioral Statistics,
Comparative Psychology, Learning and Motivation, and Animal Cognition. I
have established a small laboratory colony of hand-raised European
starlings, Sturnus vulgaris , where I do collaborative research with
my students. My dissertation focused on the role of social interaction in
the acquisition of human mimicry in starlings. Starlings who interacted
more with humans, learned more human related mimicries. My current research
focuses on how starlings use their mimicry in social settings. Students in
my lab interact with the birds, the birds' repertoire of human-related
sounds is determined, and use of mimicry sounds is measured in various
social contexts. I am also interested in how starlings vary their
production of shared species-typical sounds as a function of social context.
Marianne's CV
Contact: mengle@muskingum.edu
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Brian the student interacts with
Kirby the starling |
Hoover attempts to forage |
Anne hoping for
a third monitor
--Anne watching birds
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V. Anne
Smith Senior Lecturer, School of Biology, St. Andrew's University, Fife,
Scotland
Anne's CV
Contact:
anne.smith@st-andrews.ac.uk
phone: +44 (0)1334-463368
fax: +44 (0)1334-46-3366
My research
focuses on using computational methods to analyze complex biological
systems. I believe in using computation and experimentation in concert,
evaluating computational tools with both computer simulation and biological
intervention so that a level of confidence can be placed on results
obtained. I believe that computational methods for understanding biological
function should be practical to use in real situations, by handling the
inherent noise and error present in biological experiments and by using data
that are practical to collect.
In my dissertation research, I performed behavioral experiments in both
highly controlled and uncontrolled social situations, and discovered that
freely assorting cowbirds produce a self-organized pattern of association. I
used computer simulation to probe this complex system, and gain insight into
how the birds self-organized. I also developed simulations of assorting
animals to evaluate methods of measuring behavioral assortment in the
laboratory and field.
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