Event Date
Dr. Karen Odom, University of the Pacific, presents "Listening to Nature’s Divas: what female songbirds can tell us".
Karan Odom is an Assistant Professor at University of the Pacific. Karan is especially interested in the evolution of elaborate traits, such as bird songs and the ecological pressures that have led to complex song in female as well as male songbirds. Female songbirds specifically exhibit a wide range of variation in singing behavior, from species in which females regularly sing to species that have entirely lost song. Karan integrates phylogenetic comparative methods with field studies and neuroendocrine techniques to tease apart the evolutionary transitions and ecological processes that lead to singing in both sexes. She recently started her position at University of the Pacific after completing postdoctoral positions at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Leiden University in The Netherlands. Karan received her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) studying male and female song in troupials, a tropical oriole in Puerto Rico, and her Master's at the University of Windsor in Ontario, studying the function and geographic variation in Barred Owl duets. Karan also runs a citizen science project (the Female Bird Song Project- www.femalebirdsong.org), encouraging wildlife enthusiasts to help document the understudied singing behaviors of female songbirds.
Host: Dr. Gail Patricelli (gpatricelli@ucdavis.edu)