Professor of Biology
Professor of Neurobiology
Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Faculty Network Member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences
Bass Fellow
Campus mail:
137 Biological Sciences Building, 130 Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708
Phone:
(919) 684-6950
Email address:
snowicki@duke.edu
Our lab studies animal communication and sexual selection from an integrative perspective that includes a wide range of behavioral ecological, neuroethological, developmental, genetic, and evolutionary approaches. Birds are our most common model system, but we also have worked with insects, spiders, shrimp, lobsters, lizards, and primates, including humans. The central question that drives our work is how information, in the broadest sense of that word, is used by organisms to maximize survival and reproductive success.
Education and Training
- Tufts University, B.S. 1976
- Tufts University, M.S. 1978
- Cornell University, Ph.D. 1984
Selected Grants and Awards
- Washington Duke Scholars Program
- The COMPASS PROJECT
- Neural Codes for Vocal Sequences
- 2017 - 2018 MMUF
- AB Duke Scholars
- Funding for AB Duke Scholars program
- Collaborative Research: Cognition and Signaling in Songbirds
- DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The Role of Mating System in Sperm Competition and Protein Evolution in /Agelaius/ Blackbirds
- Impact of early nutrition on neural mechanisms of signal processing
- DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Selective pressures shaping aggressive behavoir in females: an experimental approach
- DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Sources of selection on a complex sexual signal.
- Supplement: Collaborative Research: Developmental and receiver-dependent costs of avian signals
- Collaborative Research: Developmental and receiver-dependent costs of avian signals
- Single Neuron Correlates of Learned Song
- DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Implications of production constraints for the function of vocal performance in mate choice
- DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Fitness cost of nest defense: a trade-off with offspring care?
- Collaborative Research: Complexity and Information in Avian Signals
- Dissertation research: Function of multiple signals in avian vocal communication
- Undergraduate Neurosciences Summer Research Program in Mechanisms of Behavior
- Doctoral Dissertation: Sound Production in Spiny Lobsters (Palinuridai): Morphological Constraints and the Evolution of Signal Diversity
- Undergraduate Neurosciences Summer Research Program in Mechanisms of Behavior
- Dissertation Research: Female Reproductive Coloration in Sceloporus Virgatus (Sauria:Iguanidae): A Functional Analysis
- Perception, Function and Development of Complex Vocal Signals
- Undergraduate Neurosciences Summer Research Program in Mechanisms of Behavior
- Comparative Study of Mechanisms of Vocal Production
- Comparative Study of Mechanisms of Vocal Production