Tools of the Pornithologist: Using Robots to Spy on the Sex Lives of Birds
Channel: Nerd Nite East Bay
Date: 2015-05-30

Gail Patricelli at Nerd Nite East Bay #30, Club 21, 25-May-2015

Animals use a dizzying array of sounds, smells, colors, dances, electrical fields and seismic vibrations to convince each other to mate. These elaborate courtship signals were a mystery until Darwin’s time—after proposing his theory of natural selection, Darwin was left with the question of how the flamboyant peacock could be shaped by the same process that makes the peahen so perfectly camouflaged. There is now strong support for Darwin’s answer to this question, the process he termed sexual selection, proposing that the courting sex (often, but not always the males) must be elaborate because the courted sex (often, but not always the females) demands it. But how do scientists study the conversations males and females in non-human animals have about mating? One way to do this is to participate, controlling one side of the conversation with a robot. Gail Patricelli will talk about using robotic females to study courtship behaviors in two spectacular species of birds, the satin bowerbird and the greater sage-grouse.

Gail Patricelli is a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the evolution of elaborate mating behaviors in birds and the impacts of noise pollution on breeding behaviors and populations.


Credits
Bosses: Rick Karnesky and Rebecca Cohen
Video Editor: Rick Karnesky
Videography: Rebecca Cohen and Ami Eaton
Additional Thanks: Kishore Hari