I have broad interests in animal behavior. Previously, I have studied feeding behavior in leaf-eating primates, time-place learning in bumblebees, and navigational decision-making in honeybees. Now, my research focuses on sexual selection and the functional costs of elaborate animal forms.

From the tails of peacocks to the antlers of deer to the horns of beetles, the males of many species exhibit a diversity of elaborate body forms. The evolution of these exaggerated secondary sexual characters has been driven by sexual selection, or the differential reproductive success that is accrued by males that are attractive to females or than win battles with other male rivals over access to females. Sexual selection has resulted in the elaboration of bright colors, feather plumes, and other showy traits that attract choosy females (ornaments), as well as an arsenal of enlarged antlers, horns, and tusks that provide a competitive advantage to males in male-male combat (weapons). Although female choice and male-male competition have contributed to the evolution of extravagant sexual structures, studies on sexual selection have focused primarily on explaining the processes driving the evolution of ornaments and have largely ignored the evolutionary mechanisms of weaponry. As a result, the costs of ornaments and the reasons why ornaments differ so dramatically among species in color, size, and form is now well understood, yet we know astonishingly little about the costs of weapons or why species exhibit such remarkable diversity in weapon form.

My PhD research explores the possibility that species’ differences in the costs of elaborate weaponry may help explain their divergent evolution in form. Specifically, I propose that the different locomotor costs incurred by weapons with different sizes, shapes, and locations may have contributed to modifications in weapon architecture among animal species. To understand the functional costs of weapons, and how the differential costs of weapons may have led to weapon divergence among species, I will characterize the costs of flying with an elaborate weapon: rhinoceros beetle horns. My goal is to understand how selective pressures among individuals to minimize the costs of flight may have shaped the behavior, morphology, and flight performance of rhinoceros beetles, and how selective pressures among species living in different habitats and experiencing different ecological constraints may have contributed to the diversification of weapon form.