Chemoreception is one of the dominant sensory modalities for many species of salamanders (reviewed in Chapter 2). At least seven of the ten currently recognized salamander families are known to respond to some sort of ch ...

Animal signaling systems frequently utilize multiple traits to produce and transmit a signal. These system elements may span multiple levels of organization. Functional integration of these traits may be expected to gene ...

Sexual selection can influence the mating system of an organism through multiple mechanisms. These mechanisms result in variation in reproductive success among individuals, and include scramble competition, endurance ri ...

Darwin devised the evolutionary theory of sexual selection to account for the manifold extravagances of courtship behaviors and displays. Mating interactions represent a major evolutionary process driving the elaboration ...

My dissertation focuses on the factors that influence variation in female reproductive success in plethodontid salamanders and in toads. Variation in reproductive success fuels evolutionary change. Although, females of ...