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Research projects
Timing in natural behaviors
Time is a fundamental dimension of behavior. No description of behavior can be complete without breaking it down into a series of steps that take place in a given sequence and with a given rhythm. In many natural behaviors, timing tends to be remarkably consistent. Think, for example, of the dance and songs of birds. Timing of behaviors may be based on feedback from the environment and the animal's own motor systems. It may also be based on internal "clocks", possibly located in the brain. I am interested in elucidating these mechanisms and their evolution.
Currently, my work on this topic is focused on the song of the scaly-breasted wren, Microcerculus marginatus. The song consists of a series of whistles separated by intervals of silence that progressively increase in duration from about 0.5 to 10 s. Watch the following video to see the wren in action:
My collaborators, Fernanda Duque and Julia Clarke, and I found that the precision to time intervals in the song of M. marginatus exceeds expectations from a classical theory of timing in animals. Moreover, the precision is so high, that the wrens supersed humans. Some wrens achieve a precision that is comparable to that of professional muscians with 10 years of experience. The finding suggests that specialized neural mechanisms have evolved to allow scaly-breasted wrens to achieve such precision. It also highlights the value in studying timing across species and behavioral contexts.
Publications
