Sandra L. Vehrencamp

Professor Emerita of Neurobiology and Behavior; Professor Emerita, Laboratory of Ornithology. One of the founders of behavioral ecology. Her work explored ecological factors that determine the spatial distribution patterns of animals (group size and territoriality), and the social, cooperative, energetic, and communication phenomena that result from this spatial distribution. Ecological determinants of group size studies include work on communally nesting groove-billed anis, and foraging gazelles. She published a major paper on reproductive skew and despotic vs. egalitarian animal societies, which changed the way people studied social groups. Some biologists of behavior focus on just the evolutionary reasons for actions, or just the proximate mechanisms, she does both. She studied the energy costs of displaying in lek-breeding sage grouse, nocturnal-incubating anis and roadrunners, and male conflict behavior in crickets. She also examined the role of communication in territoriality, sociality, and signaling in tropical magpie jays, song sparrows, banded wrens, and mockingbirds. With Jack Bradbury, she wrote, Principles of Animal Cooperation (second edition, 2011), which has redefined the field of animal communication and garnered more than 1200 citations. It earned Veherencamp and Bradbury the 2012 Exemplar Award of the Animal Behavior Society.