SPEAKER: Nicole Baran, Graduate student, Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, New York
TITLE: Organizational effects of vasotocin on early attachment and song learning in the zebra finch
DATE: Friday, 1st August 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room LT 4 (B3.05) and Warrnambool Campus, Room B3.03
ABSTRACT: Zebra finches (T. guttata) demonstrate selective affiliation between juvenile offspring and parents which, like affiliation between pair partners, is characterized by proximity, vocal communication and contact behaviors. In addition, they exhibit vocal learning, in which juvenile males learn courtship song through socially-guided feedback from adult tutors.
This research investigates development of affiliative behavior and tests the hypothesis that the nonapeptide arginine vasotocin (AVT, avian homologue of vasopressin) and the V1a receptor subtype (V1aR) play organizational roles prior to fledging in affiliative behavior and species-typical vocal learning.
The results suggest that AVT and the V1aR are involved in the organization of social development, perhaps modifying early attentiveness to social stimuli and attachment leading to downstream differences in learned socially-relevant behaviors.
BIO: Nicole Baran is a 5th year Ph.D. Candidate studying Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University.
She received her B.A. from the University of Chicago in 2009, where she studied both Economics and Comparative Human Development. She is currently in the lab of Elizabeth Adkins-Regan, where she studies the hormonal and neural mechanisms of avian social behavior from an evolutionary and comparative perspective.
Her current work is focused on reproductive strategies in birds, including pair bonding, extra-pair mating, conspecific brood parasitism, and sex ratio adjustment. She uses an interdisciplinary approach that includes both behavioral neuroscience and computational biology.
For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Kate Buchanan.
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SPEAKER: Kristina Smiley, Graduate student, Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, New York
TITLE: Prolactin and Parental Care: An evolutionary perspective on the mechanisms of parental care
DATE: Friday, 1st August 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room LT 4 (B3.05) and Warrnambool Campus, Room B3.03
ABSTRACT: Parental care is a critical component of fitness that is widespread across vertebrates and takes many diverse forms. Various selection pressures have led to the convergence of parental care across taxa, which provide a unique opportunity to study how neuroendocrine mechanisms can be co-opted for similar behaviors in species with different life histories, ecologies, and reproductive physiologies.
Passerine birds have figured importantly in organismal biology and ecology, but the mechanisms underlying their parental care are not well described. Neuroendocrine systems are known to coordinate both physiology and behavior in response to internal and external cues in order to maximize fitness.
However, little is known about the neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying parental care in passerine birds, which precludes us from drawing generalizable conclusions about how similar mechanisms of behavior from a common ancestor can become co-opted for new behaviors, like parental care, in descendant species.
Previous research has shown that prolactin, a conserved peptide hormone, plays an important role in parental care across species of mammals and birds.
My research begins to look at the role of prolactin in the parental care of the zebra finch, a well-suited but understudied model of avian parental care. My dissertation research seeks to understand how prolactin affects zebra finch parental behavior by measuring and manipulating circulating prolactin during parental care and to discover if neural changes occur with parental experience.
BIO: Kristina Smiley is a 4th year Ph.D. Candidate also in the Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience program in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University.
She received her B.S. in Psychology from Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) in 2010 where she studied the role of sex steroids in pair-bonding behavior in the zebra finch. Currently she works in the lab of Elizabeth Adkins-Regan where she studies the neuroendocrine basis of parental care.
Her research interests include how hormones and reproductive experience interact to promote the onset of parental care and how hormones modulate neural circuitries which process sensory input to increase sensitivity towards offspring stimuli during parental care.
Throughout her research she likes to keep an evolutionary perspective, drawing upon comparative data whenever possible to make hypotheses on how these neuroendocrine systems have been adapted for parental care. Her current research project is on the role of the hormone prolactin in parental care behavior in the zebra finch.
For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Kate Buchanan.
Centre for Integrative Ecology 