Nicole Addison

Ph.D. Student

nicole.addison[at]colorado.edu
Nikki

Predation is driver of many fascinating and diverse defensive strategies in prey species. I am interested in studying the causes of variation seen in chickadee defensive hissing. We typically expect a defense strategy to be adaptive and directionally selected on. However, in chickadees, we have individuals that always hiss or never hiss (with some intermediate hissing.) To understand why not all chickadees hiss I plan to:

  • Use deer mice as potential predator species and determine the effectiveness of hissing on their exploratory behavior
  • Perform a Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) of variation in hissing occurrence in black-capped chickadees and mountain chickadees to understand the genetic basis of defensive hissing
  • Find relationships and patterns in hissing occurrence to determine the evolution of variation in this behavior in chickadees

I was adopted from South Korea and raised in Amelia, Ohio. I attended the University of Cincinnati where I graduated with a B.S. in Biology in 2020. During and after my college degree I gained diverse animal science experiences with my local aquarium doing outreach, studying predation behavior of snakes, bird-of-prey rehabilitation, small animal veterinary work, and retail management.