My name is Ahva ("Ahvi") Potticary and I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona. Broadly, I am interested in how new complex behaviors evolve. More specifically, how we can reconcile the apparent flexibility of some behaviors with the stability of others (e.g., personality)? What processes allow for new behaviors to appear on ecological timescales? What physiological properties underlying behavior delineate the opportunities for new associations between behaviors to be made? I investigate these questions in collaboration with the Dr. Renee Duckworth lab, using western bluebirds as my study system.
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NEWS
Thank you to AOS for inviting me to write a review! The title is in flux but "Origin of cooperative breeding in birds: a widespread example of genetic accommodation?" will hopefully be done soon!
I recently received an award, thank you very much to Ruth Hoshaw, the Robert Hoshaw Memorial fund, and the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at the University of Arizona.
I recently gave a talk at the American Ornithological Society Conference in Tucson, Arizona, called "Common pathways to specific outcomes: stress links maternal environment with offspring phenotype."
In collaboration with Renee Duckworth, I just published my first chapter in Evolutionary Ecology, about what happens when there is a mismatch between the environments that mothers experience and those that their offspring live in in subsequent years in western bluebirds. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-018-9933-8
Congratulations to my lab mate, Kathryn Chenard, science illustrator extraordinaire, whose design was the logo of the recent AOS conference in Tucson, Arizona.
Drs. Renee Duckworth, Alex Badyaev and I recently published a paper in the Advances for Study of Behavior on the role of brain structure and development in delineating pathways for novel behavioral associations to form. doi.org/10.1016/bs.asb.2017.10.001
