Huge thanks to my amazing coauthors including
@jay-gallagher.bsky.social, @normanlee.bsky.social, Mary Westwood, Vanessa Leon-Gamez, Lauren Bitner, and
@robinmting.bsky.social! I could not have done this project without them!
But here's the twist! These differences disappear in the lab, with Australian females becoming more accepting; that pattern suggests that ancestral plasticity has been lost in Hawaii, leading to rather permissive females.
In the field, female Pacific field crickets from historically bottlenecked Hawaiian populations show more relaxed preferences for newly evolved long distance mating songs while females from ancestral populations discriminate against them (photo credit: David Zonana). (2/4)
So excited to share our new work out in @evolletters.bsky.social today!
doi.org/10.1093/evle...
Sexual signals and preferences for them often differ across groups, contributing to reproductive isolation. But how do new signals evolve if females already have preferences for existing ones? (1/4)
Three people posing for a photo at ABS 2025.
Cricket crew! @dalebroder.bsky.social @gwelsh.bsky.social 🦗
This is such a winning idea that will help solve the current challenges of replication in the field of animal behavior, while also providing an excellent opportunity for early-stage grad students (and even undergrads!) to learn how to science. @behavecol.bsky.social
If you know anyone who might be interested in working as a technician before a PhD, I'm looking for someone to work with me to generate some amazing data to understand the genetics of behavior, sex differences, and reproduction in an evolutionary context. Bonus? Amazing and supportive department!
We have a postdoc position available in the lab on post-copulatory barriers in hybridizing crickets. We have genomic data ready to be analyzed and crickets ready for experiments. This is a great collaborative group and a study system with a lot of potential for new projects. Join us!