Faculty Database System- Arts & Sciences and Trinity College

Stephen Nowicki, Dean of the Natural Sciences in Arts & Sciences and Bass Professor and Co-Director, Neurosciences

Office Location:	012 Allen Building
Office Phone:	(919) 668-2728
Email Address:
Web Page:	http://www.biology.duke.edu/nowicki/

Education:: Ph.D. Cornell University 1984; M.S. Tufts University 1978; B.S. Tufts University 1976

Specialties:: Organismal Biology and Behavior
Neuroscience
Evolution
Ecology and Population Biology

Research Interests: Ecology and evolution of animal communication: The Nowicki laboratory studies the ecology and evolution of animal behavior, especially questions about the evolution of diversity and complexity in animal communication signals. Steve Nowicki's current work focuses on birdsong, although he and his students have worked on a diverse array of organisms including invertebrates such as insects, spiders, crabs, shrimp and lobsters, and other vertebrates including lizards, ground squirrels and primates. Research projects combine field observation and experimentation, with laboratory studies of perception, neuroanatomy, functional morphology, phylogenetic analysis, and state-of-the-art digital signal processing. Nowicki's ongoing research projects lie in two main areas. The first concerns the evolution of receiver preferences for signal characteristics, with the goal of determining the proximate mechanisms by which signals may provide accurate information about the sender's condition or other relevant characteristics. The second main area examines how morphological and physiological mechanisms of signal production influence the evolution of signal diversity.

Recent Publications (More Publications)

Caves, EM; Davis, AL; Nowicki, S; Johnsen, S, Backgrounds and the evolution of visual signals., Trends in ecology & evolution, vol. 39 no. 2 (February, 2024), pp. 188-198 [doi] [abs].
Searcy, WA; Nowicki, S, Human-wild bird cooperation., Science (New York, N.Y.), vol. 382 no. 6675 (December, 2023), pp. 1124-1125 [doi] [abs].
Searcy, WA; Chronister, LM; Nowicki, S, Syntactic rules predict song type matching in a songbird, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, vol. 77 no. 1 (January, 2023) [doi] [abs].
Peters, S; Soha, J; Searcy, WA; Nowicki, S, Are song sequencing rules learned by song sparrows?, Animal Behaviour, vol. 192 (October, 2022), pp. 75-84 [doi] [abs].
Davis, A; Zipple, MN; Diaz, D; Peters, S; Nowicki, S; Johnsen, S, Influence of visual background on discrimination of signal-relevant colours in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata)., Proceedings. Biological sciences, vol. 289 no. 1976 (June, 2022), pp. 20220756 [doi] [abs].