General Research Interests

My general research interests encompass addressing questions in behavioral and population ecology. I am particularly interested in research questions that can be analyzed on multiple scales. Multi-scale approaches are important because processes at lower spatial or temporal scales are not necessarily reflected at higher scales. Therefore, our understanding of a particular system is not complete with an understanding of the system dynamics at only one scale. The issue of scale is one that is reflected in the interacting fields of population ecology and behavioral ecology. The approach of behavioral ecology is to focus on individuals in order to understand the adaptive significance of behaviors, whereas population ecologists focus on populations of interacting individuals to understand the processes that determine the abundance and distribution of species. These pursuits are logically linked because the behavior of individuals will impact the demographic rates of populations, and the patterns of abundance and distribution of populations can in turn affect the behavior of individuals. The usual behavioral ecology approach of focusing on individuals often neglects higher-scale spatial and temporal processes, whereas a higher scale population ecology approach may neglect underlying individual dynamics. Within this framework, I am mostly interested in questions that address how males make decisions concerning mating.

Research Descriptions

Courses Taught

Publications

Gumm, J. M. R. Gonzalez, A. S. Aspbury, & C. R. Gabor. In press. Do I know you? Species recognition in an unisexual-bisexual species complex of mollies. Ethology