Episode 32 (Season 3, Episode 5) - Lynne Honey

Lynne completed a BA at Algoma University in 1995 and quickly realized that she needed more out of academia. She went back to Algoma for two more years to complete a thesis and other courses she needed to move on to graduate studies. After a lot of support and encouragement from her undergraduate mentors (including a certain podcast host), Lynne went on to complete a PhD in Jeff Galef’s social learning lab at McMaster University where she got rats drunk so that they could get other rats drunk. After a post-doctoral fellowship at McMaster and SUNY Binghamton, Lynne joined the Department of Psychology at MacEwan University in 2003. It had been her goal to have a career at a teaching-focused university like her alma mater, so the fit at MacEwan has been ideal. Lynne is known for engaging classes with lots of hands-on learning, and has earned a couple of awards for her efforts. Her annual field school in animal learning (affectionately known by students as “bear camp”) provides students with insights about training and husbandry for captive animals. 

Lynne’s research and scholarly work has also focused on students and their learning. She’s a co-author of a popular textbook for learning and behaviour, and her research projects are designed to train students in research rather than to build an enviable CV. In fact, her CV resembles a patchwork quilt with topics including human mate choice, personality, dog greeting behaviour in dog parks, and authentic assessment techniques for undergraduate students. Her most recent project involved a captive bear who needed to deal with his past. 

Outside of work, Lynne’s got a lot of hobbies and interests. She fosters and trains dogs for a local animal rescue, travels whenever she and her partner Paul can manage it, and is usually planning at least one trip/tattoo/music festival/home renovation at all times. When she retires she would like to become a pro wrestling manager, preferably for a heel.

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Episode 26 (Season 2, Episode 7) - Jennifer Foote

Woo hoo! This one should be fun. Partly because I'm talking to.a friend and colleague from Algoma University. Also because it will be only the second episode I've done face to face. Jenn Foote came by my podcast studio (OK, look, I have two podcasting studios in my house, because I'm me, so to be clear, she came to Studio B). and we talked about her work, her origin story, and other stuff.

Jenn Foote completed a BSc. Honours in Biology from St. Mary's University, where her thesis research investigated how neighbour-stranger discrimination in song sparrows was influenced by breeding stage of females. She then moved up the road and completed MSc. in Biology at Dalhousie University where she demonstrated that Eastern song sparrows in NS share songs like west coast birds and unlike other eastern song sparrows. Both her BSc. and MSc. work was supervised by Colleen Barber. Jenn completed a PhD at Queen's with Laurene Ratcliffe where she studied dawn chorus communication networks of black-capped chickadees and demonstrated that males interact vocally at dawn and those interactions sometimes included three or more males. She then did a short postdoc with Dan Mennill at University of Windsor before moving to Algoma University in 2010. She then moved to Algoma University where her lab, the OVEN (Ornithology, Vocalization, and Ecology Network) has been studying vocal behaviour of northern Ontario songbirds. The OVEN does in fact study ovenbirds.

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Episode 23 (Season 2, Episode 4) - Aimee Sue Dunlap

On today's edition of Spit and Twitches: The Animal Cognition Podcast, I'm joined by Aimee Sue Dunlap.  She is an associate professor of biology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.

Aimee got her undergraduate degree in biology, history and English in 2000 from the University of Memphis and then her MS in biology from  Northern Arizona University in 2002 and her PhD in ecology, evolution and behavior from the university of Minnesota in 2009. It should be noted that I'm making a concession to American spelling here and should be commended...

Oh we also talked hockey.  Including Liga hockey in Finland.

Work in her lab focusses on the evolution of cognition and the adaptive value of cognition and memory, especially in bees.  We talked about her experimental evolution work, as well as her field and lab stuff.

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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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Episode 17 - Reggie Gazes

Reggie Gazes is an assistant professor of psychology and animal behaviour at Bucknell University in Lewisburg Pennsylvania.

Reggie and a pal, wondering why Hampton won't do the podcast

Reggie has a BS from Bucknell in Animal Behaviour and a PhD from Emory University where she worked under the supervision of Rob Hampton.  I first met Reggie at CO3 a few years back through Rob.  Rob and I were students in Sara Shettleworth's lab in the 90s.  (As usual, I can turn any of these posts into posts about me).  Reggie later did a postdoc at Zoo Atlanta.

Her work looks at the evolutionary roots of behaviour and cognition using a comparative approach.  She and her students look at things like memory, space and magnitude in four different species of primates (capuchin and squirrel monkeys as well as Hamadryas baboons and lion tailed macaques).  The social housing they use allows them to look at social stuff as well.

We talked about her work about transitive inference in infants and monkeys as well as a bunch of other stuff.

Thanks again to Red Arms for letting me mash up their music with the ending theme, buy their music now.


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