My lab asks the questions “How does a communication system evolve and how does it function?” We have done the most work on electric fish, tiny cousins of the formidable electric eel that communicate with electric signals.  We take an integrative approach, exploring communication at every level, from the ecological forces that drive natural selection, to behavioral signaling and mate choice, to neurochemistry and endocrinology of signal control, to metabolic partitioning and physiological trade-offs, to the proteins that move ionic charge.  Grad students in the lab have worked on a variety of systems including bird song, raptor migration, and invasive species.