Department of Biology

Research

Many animals rely on airborne or substrate-borne waves to navigate the world, respond to threats, and attract or locate mates. I am broadly interested in how acoustic and vibrational mate-finding signaling systems have evolved in the ecological contexts of eavesdropping predators and environmental noise. Given increasing anthropogenic pressures on insect populations, I also want to understand how population density, at either extreme, can shape mate searching, advertisement, and dispersal behaviors. 

In the past, I have studied multimodal signaling in diverse orthopteran species, testing the functions of different call components in an unusual cricket duet and the relationship between airborne sound and substrate-borne vibration signaling across several tropical katydid species. More recently, I have investigated how jumping spiders adjust their signaling and substrate choices in noisy environments. 

In my lab, we use a variety of methods, including bioacoustics tools, behavioral experiments, and the thoughtful application of community science data, to better understand the ecological and evolutionary dimensions of arthropod communication systems.