Current projects |
Seasonal changes in anti-predator behavior
Sword-bearing cone-head katydid males sing to attract mates during summer nights. They stop singing when they hear bat echolocation calls to avoid being eaten. In this study conducted in Dr. Hannah ter Hofstede's Sensory Ecology Lab, we are testing if they are willing to take greater risks as the season progresses and the chances to mate decline. We use a combination of behavioral, neurophysiological, and remote sensing methods. Ecological relevance of sensory individuality In this project, conducted in Dr. Hannah ter Hofstede's Sensory Ecology Lab, I am studying how consistent individual differences in certain echolocation call-design parameters interact with foraging environment characteristics. This may be a meaningful mechanism for reducing intraspecific competition and supporting larger populations in a given area. Update: after a year-long Covid induced hibernation, the project is back on track! The sensory role of whiskers in nectivorous bats' hovering flight This project is a collaboration I am fortunate to have formed with Dr. Sharon Swartz's Aeromechanics & Evolutionary Morphology Lab at Brown University, Dr. Rachel Page's Sensory & Cognitive Ecology Lab at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and Dr. ter Hofstede's lab. We are investigating how nectar-eating bats use tactile information from their whiskers to assist with fine-tuning their flight as they hover in front of flowers to feed. Evolution of diurnality in a desert rodent Most mammals are nocturnal, and that is their ancestral state. Diurnality has evolved separately in several mammalian orders, including several times in rodents. In this project, conducted in Dr. Noga Kronfeld-Schor's Ecological & Evolutionary Physiology Lab at Tel Aviv University, we use an electrophysiological approach in a controlled field site to answer evolutionary questions about such a shift from nocturnal to diurnal life using two species of desert-dwelling spiny mice. Innateness of distance estimations via pulse-echo delays by echolocating bats This project is near completion and was done in Dr. Yossi Yovel's Neuro-Ecology Lab at Tel Aviv University. In this project we used helium enriched air to change the speed of sound, thereby disrupting the normal delay between an echolocation pulse and the returning echo from a target, to find whether the coupling between any given delay and the distance it represents is innate or learned. This question is relevant when remembering that the speed of sound is not constant, but changes according to environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. Update: manuscript submitted! This project was recently presented at the 2020 Annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society. Watch the talk |
Past projects |
Effect of light pollution on urban colonies of common swifts
In this project I documented how different intensities of artificial light at night (ALAN) affect the activity cycle of a diurnal bird, showing how in one case extreme intensity ALAN causes around-the-clock foraging in a breeding colony. This was a fun project using acoustic methods borrowed from the bat world to study one of my favorite birds. Read the article here Accelerated in-utero development of an echolocation-related organ In this study we used a mobile ultrasound-imaging device to measure nose-leaf and other organs of bat embryos in the wild with minimum disturbance to the females. We found that development of the nose-leaf apparatus is prioritized during embryonic development over other organs including skull and forearm. This ensures the bat has a fully functional sensory system as soon as 1-2 days after birth. Read the article here Faster, stronger, longer, more - jamming avoidance in echolocating bats When bats swarm during foraging, emergence, or for social reasons, each bat's emissions may mask other individuals' calls and echoes, making it difficult for each bat to hear the echoes from its calls and to recognize them for its own. We found that bats deal with the first problem (detection) by increasing the intensity and duration of their calls and by increasing the emission rate; and that the second problem (ambiguity) is not an actual problem since baseline individual differences between bats in their calls' spectral parameters are sufficient for the bat to recognize its own echoes. Read the article here |