Episode 29 (Season 3, Episode 2) - Tanya Shoot

Tanya's research is at the intersection of behavioural ecology, evolution, and animal and plant cognition. The main questions they ask revolves around why and how organisms make the decisions they do and how personality, experiences, and environment impact these decisions. This research is both multi-taxa and multi-methods, spanning empirical investigations of nest-building flexibility in zebra finches during their Undergraduate and Masters at Western University, group decision-making in zebrafish and guppies with manipulated personality compositions, and theoretical modelling of the impact of personality in fruit fly populations for their PhD at Wilfrid Laurier University. 

Most recently, Tanya has had the opportunity to construct a theoretical framework of what studying plant information processing should look like as a postdoc at the University of Alberta, along with designing empirical experiments to test the framework.  Tanya plans to continue this line of research in their relatively new position at CUE and is excited to see how the different branches of plant behaviour compare to what we know about animal behaviour. 

We talked about a lot of stuff, we made fun of Noam a bit, ok, maybe that was just me, and we of course did a deep dive on Tanya's plant cognition work.

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Episode 28 (Season 3, Episode 1) - Madeleine Brodbeck

Look, I've been waiting to do this one for quite a while.

Hell, I'm pretty sure I applied for this sabbatical so I could interview Madeleine.

A bit about Maddie:

Madeleine Brodbeck completed her BSc in psychology at Algoma University in Sault Ste Marie, ON in 2015 (I was there for a lot of it, well all of it really I suppose).  

Maddie then moved on to the University of Western Ontario and the Advanced Facility for Avian Research (AFAR).  At AFAR she worked under the supervision of Scott MacDoguall-Shackelton and David Sherry.  

Her PhD work focussed on brain regions associated with electromagnetic field perception in songbirds.  Her MSc work was on memory in brown headed cowbirds (which she is revisiting, stay tuned).

She currently works as a research assistant and lab manager for the quantitative linguistics group at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

In her non science time she loves travelling, cooking (food in general really) and video games.

We talked about science, and some not science, as well as stuff and things.  (I quite clearly do these writeups before the interview, in fact, most of it is written by the guest).

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Episode 22 (Season 2, Episode 3) - Caroline Strang

Today on the podcast I'm joined by Caroline Strang.

Caroline is known for her work with bees, horses, dogs, and scarves.

She received her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Toronto where she worked closely with someone you have have heard of, Sara Shettleworth.

She then went on to work at the University of Western Ontario with someone else who has come up a lot on the podcast, David Sherry. 

Once she finished up her PhD she moved down to UT Austin and became a postdoc with Felicity Muth in their biology department.  

We talked about her work with David on bumblebee vs. honeybee cognition as well as her stuff on reversal learning in bumblebees.  We also talked a bit about her work during her postdoc and of course other stuff.

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Episode 21 (Season 2, Episode 2) - Jeff Martin

Only guest with a baseball scholarship

Jeff Martin joins me on the podcast this week.  He's actually the first non psychologist on the show.  He's a biologist or something...

Jeff attended Northwestern Oklahoma State University (NWOSU) from 2011-2015 on a baseball scholarship. He earned both a BSc in Health and Sports Science and a second BSc in Biology specializing in Natural History. Though they didn’t have a traditional honours program, he did research under the supervision of Dr. Aaron Place investigating simple conditioning in reptiles – mainly snakes. He then moved back home to Canada to attend Western University, obtaining his MSc studying with Dr. David Sherry at the Advanced Facility for Avian Research. His Master’s research focused on how birds respond behaviourally to changes in overwinter temperature

Jeff continued at Western and obtained his PhD under the supervision of Drs. David Sherry and Yolanda Morbey. His research focused on caching decisions made by Canada Jays and what factors may influence site- and item-selection. Jeff has just started a post-doc with Dr. Mélanie Guigueno at McGill University in Montréal (Go Habs Go!), where he will be investigating male choosiness in Brown-headed Cowbirds, and the importance of ecologically relevant tasks in animal cognition and behaviour.

Thanks to Red Arms for letting me mash up their music.

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