So, what is it that I do with my time???

Essentially, I spend most of my time trying to comprehend how communication in animals influences their evolutionary histories, and how we can use our knowledge of this topic to further understand the forces that have shaped the evolution of the brain. To this end, I've decided to focus most of my attention on Malawian cichlid fishes. As it just so happens, these fishes make an excellent model for asking questions regarding both the evolution of sensory systems and signalling behaviors, which makes them ideal for studies of communication.


These guys are Metriaclima sp. "msobo." Notice the dominant blue and black male, the subdominant brown male, and the yellow females. I used to breed these guys pretty regularly. This picture is a little bit rigged (I lured them out into the open with a treat...)

What am I working on now???

At the moment, I'm attempting to dissect female visual responses into three separate, but intimately related, levels. I am profiling visual sensitivities at the genetic (based on opsin sequence and expression), "early neural" (assayed via techniques such as ERG), and "whole brain" (behavioral output) levels in order to determine where inter- and intraspecific variation is likely to exist. Thereby, we may eventually be able to verify which level is most likely involved in assortative mating and, consequently, species divergence via sexual selection.

How did I end up doing that???

Previously, I did some work describing acoustic behaviors in Malawian cichlids. We found that acoustic signals in these little guys display a pattern of phylogenetic divergence that is consistent with what one might hypothesize for a signal under active sexual selection. Unfortunately, we don't know much about what cichlids are even capable of hearing, much less how they may respond to specific acoustic signals. Because of that, I thought it would be a good idea to develop some hypotheses by picking apart a system that we know a little more about. So, voila, I'm here at UMD working on cichlid vision!



A picture of a male Metriaclima lombardoi and the sonogram of a call he produced while courting a female. Ironically, the call sounds anything but sexy...it sort of sounds like a cross between a low grunt and flatulence to the human ear!

Where do I see this going???

As we likely all know, it is a little naive to assume that we can fully understand the complex behavior of animals based solely on our knowledge of a single sensory modality. Because of that, I'm interested in eventually trying to tease apart mutli-modal communication in cichlids. In doing, I hope to shed some light on how evolutionary processes acting on complicated decision-making neural circuits can lead to the development of animal cognition (I know some people think that's "animal cognition" is a dirty word, but I've worked with these little guys too long to deny how smart they really are!)

Any questions? Comments? Rants???

Drop me a line