个人简介
Professor and Maytag Chair, University of Miami 8/94 - present
Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh 7/88 - 8/94
Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh 9/82 - 6/88
Assistant Professor, Rockefeller University 7/81 - 8/82
Postdoctoral Fellow, Rockefeller University 1/78 - 6/81
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 9/72 - 8/77, Ph.D. Zoology
University of California, Berkeley, California 9/69 - 6/72, B.A. Zoology
University of California, Davis, California 9/68 - 6/69
研究领域
My principal research interest is in animal communication. I have for many years investigated functional aspects of bird song in collaboration with Steve Nowicki and Susan Peters of Duke University. One focus of this work has been on exploring the implications of proximate mechanisms of song development and song neurobiology for ultimate questions concerning the function of song in male-female communication. This focus has led to investigations of the effects of early nutritional stress on the development of the brain nuclei that control song and on the quality of song learning, using song and swamp sparrows as study organisms. We have also examined, using song sparrows, the preferences of females for well-learned over poorly-learned songs and for local over foreign songs. Another focus of our song work has been on how singing behaviors are used in aggressive signaling between male birds. We have examined a variety of possible aggressive signals in song sparrows, including song type matching, partial matching, song type and variant switching frequencies, and the use of low amplitude "soft song." We are especially interested in determining which behaviors are reliable indicators of attack and in elucidating the mechanisms that maintain reliability.
近期论文
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Searcy, W. A., and K. Yasukawa. In press. Eavesdropping and cue denial in avian acoustic signals. Animal Behaviour.
DuBois, A. L., S. Nowicki, and W. A. Searcy. 2016. A test for repertoire matching in eastern song sparrows. Journal of Avian Biology.
Akcay, C., R. C. Anderson, S. Nowicki, M. D. Beecher, and W. A. Searcy. 2015. Quiet threats: soft song as an aggressive signal in birds. Animal Behaviour 105:267-274.
Peters, S., W. A. Searcy, and S. Nowicki. 2014 Developmental stress, song learning and cognition. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 54:555-567.
Lachlan, R. F., R. C. Anderson, S. Peters, W. A. Searcy, and S. Nowicki. 2014. Typical versions of learned swamp sparrow song types are more effective signals than lesstypical versions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 281:20140252.
Nowicki, S. and W. A. Searcy. 2014. The evolution of vocal learning. Current Opinionin Neurobiology 28:48-53.
Searcy, W. A., K. B. Sewall, J.Soha, S. Nowicki, and S. Peters. 2014. Song-type sharing in a population of song sparrows in the eastern United States. Journal of Field Ornithology 85:206-212.
Anderson R. C, A. L. Dubois, D. K. Piech, W. A. Searcy and S. Nowicki. 2013.Male response to an aggressive visual signal, the wing-wave display, in swampsparrows. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 67:593-600.