Animal Behavior Society Conference

The Getty lab just returned from the annual Animal Behavior Society Conference held at Princeton.  We had a strong showing this year.  I gave a short talk on the relationship between female aggression and offspring performance.  I've found that more aggressive females have heavier babies.  In many birds, the heavier your babies, the better the chance they have at surviving.  This is an important finding because it could be a way that female aggression evolved in female house wrens.

A blurry picture of me from the audience of my talk

The other members of the Getty lab presented their latest findings too.  Sara presented a poster on her work on how growing up with or without your siblings changes your growth and development in tree frog tadpoles.  Michael also had a poster on his work on whether aging or physical condition changes the risks tree frogs are willing to take when finding a mate. 

Michael's former URA and current research assistant, Levi, joined us and presented a poster on a project he did with Michael.  Levi found that poor condition male frogs are willing to take more risks when they think predators are around in order to attract females.  Levi's poster was so good he won the Genesis award for the best undergrad poster at the whole conference!