Current Research - Evolutionary Biology
I'm currently investigating the effects of social information use and production on social decision-making. Individuals have to learn how to navigate a complicated social environment, making decisions like who to engage with and who to avoid, who to mate with and who to reject, and who to fight and who to run away from. One of the ways individuals can gather information to make these decisions is by watching the behaviors of others, or eavesdropping. I'm curious about how individual identity, social experience, and genetics influence the behaviors of both the individual being watched and the watcher.
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Previous Projects
As an undergraduate at Texas A&M in Gil Rosenthal's mate-choice laboratory, I investigated how the presence of a female trait influenced male aggression in the freshwater swordtail Xiphophorous birchmanni. I conducted behavioral trials to test our hypothesis that males with female-like markings avoided elevated aggression from other males. This project was funded by an NSF LSAMP Scholarship.
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Publications
Hutchins, M., Douglas, T., Saltz, JB. "Genetic variation in male aggression is influenced by genotype of prior social partners in D.melanogaster." Submitted.
Selected Presentations
M. Hutchins, JB Saltz, "Is Social Information Production and Use Genetically Correlated in D.melanogaster?" (July 2022) Invited Oral Presentation in Social Competency Symposium at Animal Behavior Society Annual Conference.
M. Hutchins, JB Saltz, "Somebody’s watching me: exploring the effects of social information use and production." (December 2020) Oral Presentation at Rice’s Graduate Student Symposium. Awarded Honorable Mention for Best Talk.
M. Hutchins, JB Saltz, "The effect of sex and genotypic variation of an audience on aggressive signaling behaviors." (October 2020) Oral Presentation at American Genetic Association Annual Symposium.
M. Hutchins, JB Saltz, "Somebody’s watching me: exploring the effects of social information use and production." (December 2020) Oral Presentation at Rice’s Graduate Student Symposium. Awarded Honorable Mention for Best Talk.
M. Hutchins, JB Saltz, "The effect of sex and genotypic variation of an audience on aggressive signaling behaviors." (October 2020) Oral Presentation at American Genetic Association Annual Symposium.