Anna Brownson Starting Graduate School

Anna Brownson has been working as a research assistant on the social behavior of acorn woodpeckers here with Walt Koenig of Cornell. Anna has been doing field work at Hastings for the past year (and more). Anna will be joining the lab of Dr. Andrew Zink at San Francisco State University. Anna will study mate guarding in acorn woodpeckers for a master's thesis. Anna will collaborate with Walter Koenig, Eric Walters (post-doc here with Walter), and Dr. Joey Haydock (faculty, Gonzaga University). Anna will be gathering data for her thesis this spring here at Hastings. Dr. Zink has a lot of experience studying reproductive skew in cooperatively breeding insects, which is what prompted Anna to contact him since she will be looking at reproductive skew in acorn woodpeckers. Skew means an unequal distribution of something. For instance, if one (dominant) male in a social group consistently was the father of most offspring, reproduction in that social group is "skewed". Dr. Zink also models reproductive skew, and is currently doing research on earwigs.