Faculty

Mountjoy's general interests include the function of song repertoires in Yellow-throated Vireos, including field work in Costa Rica on song variation in woodcreepers and song-sharing in White-breasted Wood-Wrens; comparative analyses of song repertoires in varied avian taxa; function of song repertoires and extended song learning in Red-eyed Vireos; comparative analyses of the evolution of song repertoire size in the genus Vireo.

"I am fascinated by how plant communities recover from disturbance, in particular from human disturbance. As a result I have become interested in the restoration and reconstruction of badly damaged plant communities."

"My research takes an interdisciplinary approach, spanning the fields of behavioral ecology, ornithology, experimental and comparative psychology, and neuroethology. The focus of my studies is on learning, memory, and foraging behavior, and involves experimental work in the field and lab. In particular, I am interested in the ecological and cognitive factors that have influenced the evolution of decision-making processes, information use, and learning in solitary and group-living species. I am the campus co-advisor for the ACM Tanzania program, which I co-directed with Jim Mountjoy in 2005."

Judith Thorn's general interests include signal transduction, the cytoskeleton, endocytosis, cell movements, development, dog behavior and training, and animal assisted therapy.

"My research program is devoted to investigating factors that control the size and character of the immune response. This basic information about how cells of the immune system respond to various stimuli has a wide variety of applications, ranging from disease prevention to disease amelioration or cure."