Pearl Rivers
Hometown: Escalon, California, USA
Fall 2021 – present
PhD in Biological Science
PEO Scholar Award
Educational/Professional Background
I received my Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Oberlin College in 2014. After graduating I decided to take some time to gain experience in field research before applying to graduate school. I traveled around the world for three years: I worked with dancing birds in Panama, introduced plants and birds in Hawaii, cooperatively breeding meerkats in South Africa, and endangered loggerhead shrikes in California. My first research job after graduating from Oberlin was a field season in Panama, working with Dr. Emily DuVal on her long-term research investigating the behavioral ecology of lance-tailed manakins. I thoroughly enjoyed the field season - the conditions were tough, but the work was fascinating and rewarding - and I found an academic mentor in Dr. DuVal. With her encouragement, I thought more seriously about graduate school and eventually applied to FSU.
Research and Teaching Interests, or Professional Field
I am a behavioral ecologist: I study how organisms interact with their environments, and how variation in environmental factors, such as parasites and disease, influence variation in behavior. Specifically, I study variation in female mate choice. Organisms from humans to bacteria exhibit mate choice: individuals evaluate potential mates and are predisposed to choose some over others. Mate choice is a complex and important force in nature that can drive the evolution of elaborate male traits such as dramatically colored plumage and complex song in male birds. A fundamental puzzle in mate choice research is explaining the maintenance of genetic variation when females have strong and consistent preferences for male traits. Using a small neotropical bird species as a study system, my dissertation research investigates two possible answers to this puzzle: 1) variation in female mate choice over time and 2) female choice for diversity in immune system genes. Male lance-tailed manakins (Chiroxiphia lanceolata) are brightly colored and perform complex dance displays for choosy females, but females may also use more subtle scent cues to assess males when choosing a mate. By examining variation in mate choice in relation to poorly understood sensory systems and across long time scales, this work will improve understanding of the axes of variation in mate choice and their effects on the evolution of elaborate secondary sexual traits.