Description: Advances in the Study of Behavior, Volume 56 highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on a variety of interesting topics, including Playing to the crowd: using Drosophila to dissect mechanisms underlying plastic male strategies in sperm competition games, Social breeding and its challenges: A case study on village weaverbirds, Inbreeding depression and social interactions, Sleeping beauties? Copulatory quiescence in arachnid females, and more.
Brief description: Susan Healy have several avenues of research currently underway all stemming from an interest in adaptation and cognition. She investigate cognitive ablities in non-model organisms such as hummingbirds, zebra finches and bowerbirds and she is especially interested in 'animal cognition in the wild' and test cognitive abilities of animals (nearly always birds) in as natural conditions as possible. She currently have two major projects: 1) cognitive abilities of rufous hummingbirds (in collaboration with Andy Hurly, U. of Lethbridge, Canada) and 2) the cognitive basis of nest building in birds (in collaboration with Simone Meddle, U. of Edinburgh, UK). She is also interested in explanations for variation in brain size (in collaboration with Candy Rowe, U. of Newcastle, UK)