Mark Bee
Distinguished McKnight University Professor
Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior
My lab’s mission is to discover both how and why animals use acoustic signals to convey information to other individuals in biologically important contexts, such as social and reproductive interactions. To accomplish this mission, we integrate behavioral, bioacoustic, biophysical, psychophysical, and neurophysiological approaches to test hypotheses about the mechanisms, function, and evolution of acoustic communication systems.
Research statement
In the Acoustic Communication Lab, our mission is to answer fundamental questions about how and why animals use acoustic signals to convey information to other individuals in biologically important contexts, such as social and reproductive interactions. To accomplish this mission, we integrate behavioral, bioacoustic, biophysical, psychophysical, and neurophysiological approaches to test hypotheses about the mechanisms, function, and evolution of acoustic communication systems. We also focus our investigations on frogs, because they are among the most vocal of all vertebrates. In frogs, acoustic communication plays important roles in species recognition and sexual selection. We are particularly interested in understanding the role of communication in mediating female mate choice and male-male competition, and the operation of communication in social environments that are extremely noisy and both temporally and spatially variable. Frogs offer powerful model systems for addressing these questions because (i) male frogs signal in large breeding aggregations, they use acoustic signals to defend calling sites, and they have a relatively small repertoire of stereotyped acoustic signals; (ii) female frogs choose mates based primarily on the acoustic properties of male signals; (iii) both male and female frogs are amenable to field and laboratory playback studies using real and computer-generated signals; and (iv) acoustic communication in frogs can be studied at multiple levels, from broad evolutionary patterns to the responses of single neurons. Our research asks questions at all of these multiple levels.