Murphy Lab

Behavioral Ecology

Trinity University

My lab’s research spans behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, and ornithology, with an emphasis on animal communication. We generally work with wild populations of birds. 

Much of our past research has focused on understanding the evolutionary processes that favor female communication signals (colors, tails, crests, etc.)  — and how females use elaborate signals to mediate competitive interactions. 

More recently, our questions focus on understanding aggression, resource defense, and territoriality.  Right now we work with a local banded population of black-crested titmice, testing for benefits associated with cooperative group defense. We're also doing genetic analyses to assess introgression arising from hybridization of our two local species of titmice.