Shana Caro is a 2020 Stengl-Wyer Scholar, and an evolutionary biologist interested in how conflicts create and shape social behavior. She studies birds, focusing on the effects of sibling-sibling, parent-offspring, and male-female conflict on parental care and parent-offspring communication. As a Stengl-Wyer Scholar, she will utilize the Brackenridge Field Laboratory (BFL) and Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station (SLP) to establish a field study on European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). This research will identify sources of evolutionary conflict, investigate how that conflict creates different parental and offspring behaviors, and determine the physiological mechanisms translating that conflict into behavioral change. She will be working in collaboration with her mentors Professor Hans Hofmann and Professor Mark Kirkpatrick.

Host: Hofmann