We ask questions about the social and environmental factors that shape communication. Our primary focus is on communication within avian and anuran families, in particular how and why offspring solicitation traits evolve. This includes life-history studies that address the selective pressures shaping families as well as observational and experimental efforts to understand the information content and function of offspring signals. Other areas of interest include visual signal evolution generally, a topic we consider by studying the avian begging display, putatively aposematic poison frogs, and freshwater fishes.
The mouths of nestling birds are often colorful, and these ornaments reveal high condition just like the vivid colors of (typically) males do. We use this trait to understand how and why parents play favorites, and how visual signals evolve.
Poison frog parents provide extended care to their offspring, including regularly feeding their tadpoles with unfertilized eggs. These tadpoles beg with rapid vibration when parents visit. The remarkable plasticity of these tadpoles, and diversity of parent life-histories, allows us to rigorously test theoretical predictions about the function and evolution of begging.