Animals, including humans, are constantly gathering information and using that information to make crucial decisions. One of the most important decisions animals have to make is how to compete over limited resources like food or mates. Gaining access to these resources is crucial to survival and reproduction, but fighting too hard or for too long can come with high costs. We are interested in how animals gather information when fighting, and how this information informs their decisions to keep fighting, to use certain behaviors, and when to give up. In addition to these (mostly) behavioral questions, we are also fascinated by the physics underlying animal movement, specifically in fights: how do animals produce and withstand the extreme forces we often see them use in fights? How has evolution engineered these exaggerated structures to deliver and withstand force? Finally, we couch our analyses firmly in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. Because contests occur over resources, understanding how animals compete can tell us about how they use resources (i.e., about ecology); and, because behaviors and structures have evolved in the context of competiton, we can use evolutionary analyses to understand how competition influences the evolution of these traits.

We focus on two study systems in the lab, though are always interested in expanding our scope.

• Our main study system is mantis shrimp, charismatic crustaceans that, among other traits, are known for delivering high-force strikes that move with accelerations similar to a bullet leaving a gun. When competing over access to territories ("burrows", or holes in dead coral and rock), we have shown that mantis shrimp exchange these high-force strikes on each others' armored tailplates, or "telsons". Combining behavior and biomechanics, we have found that the energy of a competitor's strike signals its body size, which the receiving individual uses to gauge whether to keep fighting or to give up. We've also recently been exploring the biomechanical adaptations of the telson that allow it to withstand strikes.
• We have also focused on the banded mongoose system as one for asking whether the "rules" that individual animals follow in their fights are also followed by competing groups. That is, do groups gather information and make decisions in similar ways as individuals? We've shown that group fighting ability is related to both individual- and group-level properties (PNAS, 2022), and that group cohesion is a crucial behavioral trait during a fight (Ethology, 2021). We're hoping to develop field-based experiments that more directly test how groups gather and use information.
• Previously, I've also studied color perception in zebra finches (Nature, 2018 and other works) and functional morphology in canids (J. Morph, 2012) and chitons (Marine Biology, 2015).

The projects we are currently tackling in the lab include:

• Assessment strategies in changing environments. We normally study how animals gather information by staging fights between two competitors fighting over a single resource. In nature, however, individuals move through a complex environment, in which they may choose among several different potential opponents and several potential resources, or choose not to fight at all. We are using "mesocosm" designs to track the fighting decisions made by multiple individuals in more naturalistic environments. From there, we will change the competitive environment, increasing or decreasing the availability of resources. We hypothesize that the types of information individuals will gather in their fights will change with resource availability.
• Biomechanical adaptations of armor to high-force impacts. Mantis shrimp not only deliver strikes with bullet-like speeds and hundreds of Newtons of force--many species must also receive these strikes without incurring damage to their armored tailplate, or "telson". Other species do not compete over limited resources, and therefore do not need to receive impacts on the telson. We are harnessing this evolutionary diversity to test the hypothesis that fighting has led to adaptations in the telson that allow it to receive strikes with minimal damage. We are using techniques including CT scanning, Scanning Electron Microscopy, and high-speed video to test these questions in an evolutionary framework.
• Behavioral mechanisms of intergroup assessment. Our recent finding that banded mongoose group fighting ability is comprised of both individual- and group-level properties begs the question: how do groups gather information about these properties? We are hoping to develop field-based experimental designs that allow us to test this question.

Pitelka Prize, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, 2022

Human Frontier Science Program Long-Term Fellowship, 2019-2022

Young Investigator Award, International Society for Research on Aggression, 2018

Institute at Brown for Environment and Society

Data Science Institute

At Brown, I am teaching MD28: Human Anatomy 1, for first-year medical students.

Prior to arriving at Brown, I had experience teaching a variety of courses, including Animal Physiology, Coding in R, and Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy, among others.