Schuppe lab
@ CMC

While communication is essential for survival and reproduction, it often varies dramatically across scales. Across species, whole behavioral strategies diverge over evolutionary time, in some cases producing the most elaborate displays in the natural world. Even within a single species, individuals differ more than you would assume: two Bengalese finches raised in the same colony can differ twofold in how often they call or sing. We often treat those as separate questions, but we are increasingly interested in whether behavioral diversity at both scales is driven by similar mechanisms. Our approach is interdisciplinary, centered on mapping and manipulating gene expression in the specialized brain regions that control song, which songbirds uniquely let us study from behavior all the way down to the gene.