Research in the Hauber lab (@cowbirdlab on Twitter) in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior at the School of Integrative Biology of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, focuses on the evolution of recognition systems. Shifting gears between behavioral, developmental, physiological, and molecular tools, we are studying the social and genetic consequences of species recognition in avian brood parasites, such as cuckoos, cowbirds, and whydahs, and their hosts. Obligate brood parasitism in birds provides an exciting model system for the evolution of social behaviors because, unlike 99% of bird species, they lay their eggs into nests of other species and are reared by foster parents. Several other projects in the lab tap into national and international collaborations throughout the world of birds, including the unique and often endangered sea- and shorebird fauna of New Zealand, as well as mammals, spiders, and other organisms from around the globe.
This website is a work in progress, so please check in frequently for news and updates. Here's one of our updates on the Illinois website. The lab participates in the 2022 in-person Animal Behavior Conference at Indiana University.
New cover design and a new co-editor-in-chief for the JFO: it's Mark Hauber! Congrats to Alec Luro who successfully defended his PhD thesis at Illinois!! He is going graduate with a doctorate in December 2021 and move to Portland, ME, for a data science job in epidemiology! We have 3 papers just published at Biology Letters; one on warbler time travel, another on the evolution of eye sizes in brood parasites and hosts, and a perspective on RNA-sequencing for behavioral ecology!! And we got the cover, too, with Lawson et al.! PhD student Shelby Lawson won and shared the Allee Award at the Animal Behavior Society's 2021 meeting. Congrats!! Our first Ecology paper, with Henry Pollock, was featured in the New York Times and the Miami Herald! An old/new book from Mark: Birds/Gems of Nature. Now in print!! Hannah's new General and Comparative Endocrinology paper and a new Ethology article are also featured on the covers of the April and March 2021 issues, respectively. We are excited to welcome in Fall 2021 two new members to the lab, PEEC PhD student Facundo Fernandez-Duque and EEB PhD student Mac Chamberlain! New egg rejection work with Sarah Winnicki is highligthed in the New York Times! Sarah was also featured in an ABA podcast talking about cowbirds! And we got the cover of Royal Society Open Science! Awesome scicomm video with expert advice from Nick Antonson! A first! The Hauber lab co-authors a Nature paper with a suite of colleagues on avian genomes; we got the cover, too! Undergrad Illinois research student and published first-author Rebecca Ducay visits Chicago's Field Museum! Rebecca works on individual identity signaling in Icelandic murre eggs! Welcome Abbi Turner and Dr. Henry Pollock to the Lab!! We are excited to start the Fall 2020 semester with both of you joining the lab! Welcome (back) Dr. Janice Enos! She starts a 2-year USDA/NIFA postdoc in the lab working on red-winged blackbirds in agricultural fields. New egg rejection and yolk hormone paper now published open access with Mikus, Caterina, and Ryan Paitz in @IOBOpen journal. Two new papers by Hannah, and a special issue edited, with the cover, in Phil Trans Royal Soc London B! Congrats to all the contributors. Our first and second hormone-and-robin-egg-rejection paper on egg rejection and American robins is now published and in press with Mikus at J Comparative Psychology and Biology Letters! Two papers on Red-winged Blackbirds' responses to Brown-headed Cowbirds today (3/5/20): one is published by Matt Louder et al here and was highlighted by the Wildlife Society, and one is accepted by Lawson et al. Update: Shelby Lawson's paper is now published, and was highlighted by the Audubon Society's News and by a Scientific American podcast! There's also a great YouTube video to watch. Welcoming Abbi Turner to the lab, starting in Fall 2020 as an Illinois Graduate College Fellowship winner. Field work in the Cache River with her, Sara Lipschutz (Indiana University) and Nick Antonson. We started the year with a new cover of Vision Research. Congrats Tommy, Mikus, Daniel, and Team Czech Cuckoo! We got another journal cover this year (BCI 2019)!! Happy new year! We are sad to see Mikus Abolins-Abols move on from our lab. But he is starting his next stage of his career as an asst. prof. of term at Louisville University. Catch up with him through his website. Matt Louder's new paper is now published on cowbird passwords in Current Biology! And highlighted on ABC News! He also got the cover of J Evol Biol earlier this fall with the mating system paper on parasitic cowbirds. The National Geographic Society funded our research on red-winged blackbirds with an Exploration Grant! #InsideNatGeo We welcome Sarah Winnicki, a co-advised PhD student with TJ Benson, to the Hauber lab! Follow them on @skwinnicki We lost a major force in North American ornithology, Prof. Mary Bomberger Brown. I've known her for 26 years! Here's a great video of her about how to become an Ornithologist. Seven of us from the CowbirdLab attend BEHAVIOUR 2019 Conference. Dr Hauber becomes a fellow of the Animal Behavior Society! The Hauber lab completes a big 2019 field season in Illinois. Over 500 nests monitored!! Bird embryos can hear!! See our coverage in IFLScience and the link to the paper in Neuroreport. Commenting on the new dinosaur egg color paper for Science Magazine! Visiting the Cache River to check up on Swamp Canary (Prothonotary Warbler) nest boxes planted by Matt Louder, with the lab! We got the cover of the Oct. 2018 J Chemical Ecology. So excited about this paper on eggshell pigments from cuckoo and host eggs in Central America! Mikus Abolins-Abols catches the cover of Proc B with our endocrine perspective paper! Ian Hay's master's thesis on rolling murre eggs is highlighted in Science and Forbes magazines! Quite a controversy!! Our collaborative work on pigmentary colors (and the lack thereof) in non-parasitic cuckoo eggshells is featured on the cover of J Avian Biology Aug. 2018! @Cowbirdlab presents posters and talks on our research at #BehavEcol2018 @ISBE2018!! Russian cuckoos strike again! Highlight from Audubon magazine. Two new PhD students recruited for Fall 2018: welcome to Hannah Scharf and Nick Antonson! Congrats to Ian Hays! Successful defense of his Master's thesis on rolling murre eggs! Whydahs in Florida! Dr. Hauber comments on the potential impacts in the Miami Herald. A great big welcome to Dr. Mikus Abolins-Abols to the Lab!! Together with new PhD student Shelby Lawson, the lab is now growing at Illinois! Mark Hauber becomes a Research Associate in Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History! Dr. Hauber collaborates to publish "The biology of color" in Science! The Hauber lab (current and former members) attends the first ever American Ornithological Society conference! Mark Hauber is interviewed by the NY Times about latest research on whydahs! Dr. Hauber is interviewed by The Pulse at WHYY Philadelphia. 
New paper on House Sparrows by Tommy Manna et al. also lands on the cover, in J Avian Biology!
PhD student Alec Luro and research tech Miri Dainson hard at work Jazz Spectrogramming birds at the AMNH !
Congrats to Tommy Manna for publishing a timely review of all things brood parasitic--amongst insects! Here's the link to the paper. Here's Tommy presenting his thesis work at SICB!! Dr Hauber is quoted in the Washington Post on new zebra finch embryonic research published in Science magazine. |
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Prof. Mark E. Hauber, Ph.D, D.Sc.
Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
505 S. Goodwin Avenue,
Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Tel.: +1-217-300-7127; Fax: +1-217-244-4565
Email: mhauber@illinois.edu
@cowbirdlab
Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
505 S. Goodwin Avenue,
Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Tel.: +1-217-300-7127; Fax: +1-217-244-4565
Email: mhauber@illinois.edu
@cowbirdlab
