S3E8 Maren Vitousek on Stress in Tree Swallows and Motherhood in Academia

In this conversation, Matthew speaks with Dr. Ximena Bernal, professor of biological sciences at Purdue University. They discuss Ximena's research into spies in the túngara frog communication system. After the break, they talk about Ximena's journey as a native Spanish speaker working as a scientist in a field whose primary language is English and her efforts to increased communication between animal behavior scientists who speak different languages.This week's Two-Minute Takeaway comes from Dr. Brian Leavell, a recent PhD graduate from Ximena's lab. Brian is now a postdoc at Boise State University. Learn more about Brian's work here, and follow him on Twitter.Articles relevant to this week's show:Bernal, X. E., Rand, A. S., & Ryan, M. J. (2006). Acoustic preferences and localization performance of blood-sucking flies (Corethrella Coquillett) to túngara frog calls. Behavioral Ecology, 17(5), 709-715.Bernal, X. E., Page, R. A., Rand, A. S., & Ryan, M. J. (2007). Cues for eavesdroppers: do frog calls indicate prey density and quality?. The American Naturalist, 169 (3), 409-415. 

En esta conversación, Matthew habla con Dr. Ximena Bernal, profesora de biología en la Universidad Purdue. Hablan de la investigación de Ximena sobre espías en el sistema de comunicación de la rana túngara. Después del descanso, hablan sobre el viaje de Ximena como hablante nativa de español trabajando como científica en un campo cuyo idioma principal es el inglés y sus esfuerzos para aumentar la comunicación entre los científicos del comportamiento animal que hablan diferentes idiomas.Artículos relevantes para el programa de esta semana: Bernal, X. E., Rand, A. S., & Ryan, M. J. (2006). Acoustic preferences and localization performance of blood-sucking flies (Corethrella Coquillett) to túngara frog calls. Behavioral Ecology, 17(5), 709-715. Bernal, X. E., Page, R. A., Rand, A. S., & Ryan, M. J. (2007). Cues for eavesdroppers: do frog calls indicate prey density and quality?. The American Naturalist, 169 (3), 409-415. 

In this week's episode, Maren Vitousek joins the show to talk about stress and her work in tree swallows. She starts by describing what stress is and what it is not. Matthew and Maren talk about the development of the stress response and its long-term implications. Then Maren's talk about the tree swallow project that she co-directs and what her lab has learned from studying stress in these animals.After the break, they talk about Maren's experience as a mother of three in academia. Maren describes her experience becoming a mother at three different career stages, the costs that mothers pay in academia, and what cultural and policy changes can be made to make academia more parent-friendly.This week's Two-Minute Takeaway comes from Mary Woodruff (@MaryJWoodruff), a PhD Candidate in the Rosvall Lab at Indiana University. She uses behavior and physiology to understand how wild birds are coping with climate change. Learn more about Mary’s work here.Del Giudice, M., Buck, C. L., Chaby, L. E., Gormally, B. M., Taff, C. C., Thawley, C. J., ... & Wada, H. (2018). What is stress? A systems perspective. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 58(6), 1019-1032. https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/58/6/1019/5094765Credits: The Animal Behavior Podcast is created by a team of animal behavior researchers and audio professionals. Come meet us here! We receive production support from the Cornell Broadcast studio directed by Bert Odom-Reed, and financial support from the Animal Behavior Society.

This week Matthew speaks with Jenny Tung, McArthur fellow and the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.They start out by discussing the mutual benefits that molecular biologists and behavioral ecologists can gain from bringing their methods and frameworks together. They discuss two examples of the power of that synergy from Jenny's work as a co-director of the Amboseli Baboon Research Project: (1) unraveling the hybridization history of the population and the behavioral impacts of hybrid ancestry and (2) measuring "biological" age and its predictors. They close by discussing Jenny's new role as director of MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology.Papers Relevant to this Week's episode:Hybridization in the Amboseli population:Vilgalys, T. P., Fogel, A. S., Anderson, J. A., Mututua, R. S., Warutere, J. K., Siodi, I. L. I., ... & Tung, J. (2022). Selection against admixture and gene regulatory divergence in a long-term primate field study. Science, 377(6606), 635-641.Biological aging in baboons:Anderson, J. A., Johnston, R. A., Lea, A. J., Campos, F. A., Voyles, T. N., Akinyi, M. Y., ... & Tung, J. (2021). High social status males experience accelerated epigenetic aging in wild baboons. Elife, 10, e66128.Credits: The Animal Behavior Podcast is created by a team of animal behavior researchers and audio professionals. Come meet us here! We receive production support from the Cornell Broadcast studio directed by Bert Odom-Reed, and financial support from the Animal Behavior Society.

In this episode, Matthew travels to South Africa to talk with legendary zoologist and behavioral ecologist, Tim Clutton-Brock. They discuss how Tim came to study meerkats and the logistical benefits of meerkats as a study system. Then they dig in to cooperative breeding and its implications for evolution. In the second half of the show, they discuss Tim's 50+ year career, how he has seen the field of animal behavior change, and where he thinks it should be headed.Two-Minute Takeaway: Marina Watowich is a postdoc at Vanderbilt University. Check out her paper on the impacts of hurricane Maria on aging in the Cayo Santiago macaques here.Credits: The Animal Behavior Podcast is created by a team of animal behavior researchers and audio professionals. Come meet us here! We receive production support from the Cornell Broadcast studio directed by Bert Odom-Reed, and financial support from the Animal Behavior Society.

In this episode, Matthew speaks with Robert Seyfarth, professor emeritus in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania. In the first half of the show, they discuss in detail some of the foundational playback experiments that Robert performed in partnership with his late wife Dorothy Cheney. These legendary experiments revealed fundamental discoveries about the kind of social knowledge monkeys have about the groups in which they live.In the second half of the show, they follow an "Ask Me Anything" style interview that covers a wide range, from building a family and field site with your closest collaborator and friend to questions of animal emotion and pre-linguistic, symbolic thought and communication.This week's two-minute takeaway comes from Arielle Fogel (Twitter @afogel29), a postdoc in Andy Clark's lab at Cornell University. See the paper that Arielle describes in Animal Behaviour here. Most relevant books discussed in today's show:How Monkeys See the World (Amazon link) by Dorothy Cheney and Robert SeyfarthBaboon Metaphysics (Amazon link) by Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth Wild Life: Dispatches from a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs (Amazon link) by Keena RobertsCredits: The Animal Behavior Podcast is created by a team of animal behavior researchers and audio professionals. Come meet us here! We receive production support from the Cornell Broadcast studio directed by Bert Odom-Reed, and financial support from the Animal Behavior Society.

Matthew hosts a live episode of the podcast at the 2023 meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Portland, Oregon.The show features friends of the pod Swanne Gordon and Jeff Podos, as well as special guests Steve Nowicki and Ted Stankowich.Content relevant to this episode:1. Buy books of poems written by Janie E. Bibbie, the poet from whom Swanne reads2. See Kim Rosvall's flaming hula hoop performance along with a list of others' circus tricks: http://www.nowickilab.org/tricklist.html

In this episode,  Matthew speaks with Sara Lewis about her book, "Silent Sparks" and her career studying fireflies. They discuss the sexually selected behaviors that are so central to fireflies' lives.  After the break, they talk about Sara's conservation work focused on documenting firefly population dynamics and threat levels that different species face.  This week's Two-Minute Takeaway comes from Cheyenne McKinley, a PhD student studying bioluminescent ostracods in Todd Oakley's lab at UCSB.Resources relevant to this week's show:Silent Sparks, Sara's book about her career and research studying fireflies.Fallon, C. E., Walker, A. C., Lewis, S., Cicero, J., Faust, L., Heckscher, C. M., ... & Jepsen, S. (2021). Evaluating firefly extinction risk: Initial red list assessments for North America. PloS one, 16(11), e0259379.State of the Fireflies of the United States and Canada: Distributions, Threats, and Conservation Recommendations. Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Credits: The Animal Behavior Podcast is created by a team of animal behavior researchers and audio professionals. Come meet us here! We receive production support from the Cornell Broadcast studio directed by Bert Odom-Reed, and financial support from the Animal Behavior Society.

In this episode,  Matthew speaks with Thore Bergman about Niko Tinbergen's 1963 paper "On Aims and Methods of Ethology." They discuss Tinbergen's four questions as well as additional context for each and Thore describes how he has applied Tinbergen's principles to his own work.After the break, they discuss a paper that Thore and Jacinta Beehner published last year, arguing that the connections between Tinbergen's questions have been misunderstood.This week's Two-Minute Takeaway comes from Erin Wall, a PhD candidate studying birdsong perception in Sarah Woolley's lab at McGill University.Papers relevant to this week's show:Tinbergen, N. (1963). On aims and methods of ethology. Zeitschrift für tierpsychologie, 20(4), 410-433.Bergman, T. J., & Beehner, J. C. (2022). Leveling with Tinbergen: Four levels simplified to causes and consequences. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 31(1), 12-19.Credits: The Animal Behavior Podcast is created by a team of animal behavior researchers and audio professionals. Come meet us here! We receive production support from the Cornell Broadcast studio directed by Bert Odom-Reed, and financial support from the Animal Behavior Society.

In the first episode of Season 3, we kick off our new miniseries, "Foundations of Animal Behavior" in a conversation between Matthew and Darwin scholar and intellectual historian Dr. William Kimler. We recommend that you read Chapter 7 either before or after this conversation. Here is the version (1st edition) that William and Matthew reference, starting on page 207 of the text (page 114 of the pdf): http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/pdf/1859_Origin_F373.pdf William first describes the social and intellectual context in which the Origin was written, including a description of natural theology and Darwin's own movement away from theology as a personal motivation in his work.William steps us through five excerpts from Chapter 7, describing additional context and meaning that might otherwise be missed by a first (or tenth!) time reader of the chapter.After the break, they discuss William's path from field ecologist to intellectual historian and what he sees as the value in connecting history and science. William pursues this goal as director of the Jefferson Scholars program at North Carolina State University.Here are the books that William suggests any aspiring readers of Darwin, likely available at your local or university library:On the Origin of Species, 1st edition: http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/pdf/1859_Origin_F373.pdfThe Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, with Introduction by John Tyler Bonne and Robert M May: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691023694/the-descent-of-man-and-selection-in-relation-to-sexThe Darwinian Heritage: See Chapter 12 for the work by Janet Browne that William describes: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7ztrtbThe Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought. See Chapter 20 for the essay by Gregory Radick that William references.Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior by Robert J Richards: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo5975789.htmlThis week's Two Minute Takeaway came from Caleb Hazel, PhD candidate and philosopher of science at Duke University.  Learn more about Caleb and his work on his website.  Credits: The Animal Behavior Podcast is created by a team of animal behavior researchers and audio professionals. Come meet us here! We receive production support from the Cornell Broadcast studio directed by Bert Odom-Reed, and financial support from the Animal Behavior Society.