Nicole Creanza
Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences
Research Interests: Nicole Creanza’s research targets three fundamental questions: (1) In what ways can learned behaviors change the course of genetic evolution? (2) How much information about evolutionary history persists in learned behaviors? (3) How do ecological factors, such as environmental and species interactions, affect the evolution of learned behaviors? Her lab addresses these questions by integrating the study of human linguistic and genetic variation, the evolution of learned birdsong in a genetic context, and theoretical and computational models of genetic and cultural evolution.
Keywords: Evolution of learned behaviors such as birdsong and human language, computational studies of genetic and cultural data, mathematical modeling, phylogenetic comparative analyses