Welcome to the Blumstein Lab

The 14 species of marmots make an ideal experimental system to ask questions about the evolution of social behavior and communication because they live in a variety of habitats, exhibit a range of social systems, and all species emit between one and five types of alarm calls. Past studies have focused on the meaning of these calls. Current work focuses on yellow-bellied marmots at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado to better understand the evolution of alarm calling and social variation, antipredator behavior, as well as how alpine animals respond to climate change. The behavior and population biology of the marmots of RMBL have been continuously studied since 1962. Exciting new research directions focus on understanding reproductive suppression in females, coalitionary alliances in males, the consequences of social relationships, and the importance of 'stress' in reproduction and health. Visit the RMBL Marmot Project website for more information and a comprehensive list of publications.

Participants: Dan Blumstein, Janice Daniel, Raquel Monclus, Lucretia Olson, Matt Petelle, Tina Wey
Collaborators: Ken Armitage (University of Kansas), Peter Bednekoff (Eastern Michigan University), Andrew Bryant (Vancouver Island Marmot Recovery Project), Ferenc Jordán (Microsoft Research, Trieste), Alexander Nikol'skii (Russian People's Friendship University), Madan Oli (University of Florida), Arpat Ozgul (Imperial College, Silwood Park), Lynn Patton, Wendy Saltzman (UC Riverside), Dirk Van Vuren (UC Davis)
Links: The Marmot Burrow
Popular Press: Science News, Science, Natural History, Los Angeles Times, Audubon Magazine , The Rocky Mountain News, The Aspen Daily News, KBUT Nature Notes-20 min interview, The New York Times, also see the special featurette about studying marmots included with the 15th Anniversary Edition release of the film Groundhog Day.

We are building tools to inventory animals by detecting, recording, and analyzing their sounds. Among other functions, this will enable behavioral ecologists to study the temporal and spatial dynamics of acoustic communication, and conservation biologists and wildlife managers to acoustically census animals. While there has been the development of “proof-of-concept” tools and algorithms for many of the components of a usable system, there is no reliable, robust, and easy-to-use system that will permit field biologists to easily census acoustic animals. With NSF support, we are developing VoxNet: an integrated software and hardware package which will be a quantum leap forward beyond existing technology in four main areas: software, near-real time event recognition, energy efficiency, and a much longer communication range.

Participants: Dan Blumstein
Collaborators: Abeer Alwan, Wei Chu, Charles Taylor and Kung Yao (UCLA), Lewis Girod and Samual Madden (MIT).

Links: Birds of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory

Recent advances in comparative methods have led to a renaissance in the study of the evolution of behavior. Past studies have focused on the evolution of social and communicative behavior in ground-dwelling sciurid rodents, and the evolution of infanticide in rodents. Current work focuses on the evolution of communication and social behavior in birds and mammals and on factors that influence longevity in birds.

Participants: Dan Blumstein, Kim Pollard, Lucretia Olson
Collaborators: Luis Ebensperger (Universidad Católica de Chile), Mike Mooring (Point Loma Nazarene University), Theo Manno & F. Stephen Dobson (Auburn), Anders Møller (Université Pierre et Marie Curie)

Many birds and mammals vary the amount of time allocated to the mutually-exclusive activities of foraging and antipredator vigilance as a function of the number of adjacent conspecifics. This fundamental tradeoff has important consequences for the evolution of sociality but could result from two very different pathways: feeding competition, or a reduction in the risk of predation. Comparative work seeks to understand the evolution of so called 'group-size effects', and empirical studies on marmots identify mechanisms underlying vigilance.

Participants: Dan Blumstein, Janice Daniel

Popular Press: Ecos Magazine

Many species are isolated from the predators with which they evolved. Remarkably, we know little about how long presumably adaptive antipredator behavior persists in a species' behavioral repertoire once selection is relaxed for antipredator behavior. Previous work focused on kangaroos and wallabies that are either found with predators, or have been isolated from them for 30 to 9,500 years. The goal was to understand how long antipredator behaviors of different degrees of sophistication persist under relaxed selection. An exiciting dimension of this research created virtual worlds where we studied relaxed selection for antipredator behavior. New work focuses on marmots and the degree to which predator discrimination abilities persist for extinct predators.

Participants: Dan Blumstein, Janice Daniel
Collaborators: Avi Bitton (UCLA Computer Science) and Jose Fernandes (UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design)

Popular Press: Science Daily; Terra Daily; PsychCentral

Knowledge of animal behavior can help us conserve and manage endangered species. A common management intervention to recover a locally extinct population is captive breeding followed by reintroduction. Sadly, most of these reintroductions fail, and predation is often implicated as the cause of failure. Previous work focused on detailed studies of predator recognition abilities in kangaroos and wallabies as well as the critically-endangered Vancovuer Island marmot, combined with studies that focus on specifically what is learnt when animals are trained to recognize predators. Work sought to understand the degree to which kangaroos and wallabies benefited from living socially. Even relatively non-social species may benefit from aggregation.

Participants: Dan Blumstein
Collaborators: Andrew Byrant, Berna-Dean Holland
Popular Press: Science News, Nature, Nature Science Update, NatureAustralia

Ecotourism is the fastest growing part of the world's largest industry, tourism. Yet, in order for ecotourism to be sustainable, we must know much more about how non-humans perceive the myriad of impacts associated with tourism so that they can be minimized. Unfortunately, most studies focus on a single species and there is no theory managers can use to predict how a particular species might react to, say, the construction of a hiking trail. Current and future work aims to develop predictive models about how species react to human impacts based on an understanding of life-histories and evolutionary "experiences". in addition, Esteban and I are writing A Primer of Conservation Behavior for Sinauer.

Participants: Dan Blumstein
Collaborators: Esteban Fernández-Juricic (Purdue), Ted Stankowich (UMass), and Pat Zollner (Purdue)

At UCLA we teach an intensive field biology class called the Field Biology Quarter. I've taken groups of highly-motivated undergraduates to Australia, Kenya, and the Virgin Islands for a bout of intensive research and learning. Students write proposals while in the US, then, working collaboratively in groups of three, have 3 weeks in-country to conduct the research. A bout of analysis and writing follows back in LA. In the past, students have conducted first-rate research and a variety of these student-generated projects (mostly focusing on antipredator behavior and communication) have been published. Some have even received popular press!

Participants: Dan Blumstein

Past Teaching Assistants: Janice Daniel, Jonathan Drury, Brenda Larison, Brian Smith, Lucretia Olson

Popular Press: Natural History, Science Update, Nature

Colleagues and I are creating a field of Natural Security. Inspired by some inflexible responses following the attacks of September 11th, and our slow responses to adapt to to asymetrical conflicts with insurgents, we use the lessons of 3.5 billion years of life to try to develop novel defensive strategies. All animals must learn to live with risk; those that don't die or become extinct. Thus, the term 'war on terror' is flawed in that it assumes we can eliminate risk; we can't and therefore must effectively manage it. The diversity antipredator behavior provides a variety of strategies animals use to manage their threats. Outcomes of this interdisciplinary collaboration have included an edited volume, called Natural Security, and a symposium at the 2009 AAAS meetings.

Participants: Dan Blumstein
Collaborators: Rafe Sagarin (Duke), Dominic Johnson (Edinburgh), Terence Taylor (ICLS)
Media: Science Daily (reprinted elsewhere), Swedish Radio (in Swedish), Global Security Newswire, SciCom Interview

Links: Darwinian Security Website, Natural Security Book

To study behavior one must often quantify it. With NIH support, we developed, and freely distribute, a new and powerful event-recorder and analysis package. It is written in the Java(TM) computer language so that works on virtually any modern microcomputer. Sinauer has published the JWatcher book--Quantifying Behavior the JWatcher Way.

Participants: Dan Blumstein, Janice Daniel
Collaborator: Chris Evans (Macquarie University), Jose & Nada daVeiga (Convolution)
Links: JWatcher web site. Book reviews: Condor, Integrative and Comparative Biology, Quarterly Review of Biology.

I feel that if we love nature, we're obligated to protect it. Thus, I'm involved in several projects that seek to translate science to action through environmental education. Charlie Saylan and I are working on a book-length treatment of our PLoS-Biology essay--The failure of environmental education (and how we can fix it) for UC Press. I've started to write Op-Ed pieces, and I write popular pieces whenever possible. A recent example of this is my essay in Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories About Global Warming on pika. I also take children and adults out 'marmoteering' as part of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory's Environmental Education Program to share my excitement of biology and animal behavior with others.