2011-2012 Speakers
Molly Cummings
Biologist, University of Texas at Austin
March 26, 2012
7 p.m.
University Hall Auditorium
Appearing in conjunction with the Darwin Keynote Speakers Series and Women in Science
Molly Cummings earned her BA at Stanford University in Human Biology in 1990; a Post-Graduate Diploma in Marine Sciences at James Cook University in North Queensland, Australia in 1993; and her PhD in Evolutionary Biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2001.
She completed a short PostDoc at the University of Texas at Austin, and has been a member of the faculty at UT Austin since 2004 where she is now an Associate Professor. Her research focuses on external and internal processes shaping animal communication traits with an emphasis on behavior.
She combines environmental measures, behavioral experiments in the lab and field, and molecular approaches to achieve an integrative understanding of the sources and targets of selection for communication trait evolution. Research in her lab focuses on 3 major areas: neural mechanisms of mate choice, polarization camouflage and communication, and the evolution of conspicuous signals (aposematic signals).