I am interested in understanding the factors that have shaped behavior across both cultural and evolutionary timescales. I am also interested in the potential macro-evolutionary consequences of these processes. To explore these questions, I study the communication systems of various taxa (i.e. [hummingbirds, wrens, bats), with a particular focus on neotropical species. My research combines single-species behavioral studies, comparative phylogenetic analyses, and custom data analysis through scientific programming.
I also develop software packages for analyzing behavioral data. I created the R packages warbleR, which provides functions to streamline high-throughput acoustic analysis of animal sounds, and Rraven which simplifies the integration of Raven Pro (a sound annotation software) for bioacustic analysis workflows in R. I also created the R packages baRulho, to quantify acoustic signal transmission and degradation, and ohun, to optimize automatic detection. I am currently expanding this ecosystem with two new packages: suwo, for accessing nature media repositories through R and PhenotypeSpace, for quantifying features of multivariate phenotypic spaces.