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Transitions between annual cycle stages (e.g. breeding, molt, migration, hibernation) allow animals to deal with seasonally predictable and unpredictable environmental variation. Therefore, appropriate timing of these transitions, so that they correspond to optimal environmental conditions, can have a major impact on lifetime reproductive success. The breeding-molt transition represents an important trade-off between current reproduction and future survival/reproduction. Understanding the underlying environmental cue response mechanisms responsible for timing such transitions is central to understanding how animals deal with environmental variation and mediate trade-offs between annual cycle stages. While the responsiveness to photoperiod cues has been widely studied, less is known about how non-photic cues influence the timing of transitions between annual cycle stages. My current research is focused on the role that social cues/signals exchanged between mates play in the timing of the transition between breeding and molt in House Finches (Carpodacus mexicanus).
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Publications
Hahn, T. P., Watts, H. E., Cornelius, J. M., Brazeal, K. R., & MacDougall-Shackleton, S. A. 2009. Evolution of environmental cue response systems: Adaptive variation in photorefractoriness. General and Comparative Endocrinology 163, 193-200.
Brown, C. R., Brown, M. B., & Brazeal, K. R. 2008. Familiarity with breeding habitat improves daily survival in colonial cliff swallows. Animal Behaviour 76, 1201-1210.
Brown, C. R., Brazeal, K. R., Strickler, S. A., & Brown, M. B. 2006. Feather mites are positively associated with daily survival in cliff swallows. Canadian Journal of Zoology 84, 1307-1314.
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