NCAS Presentation this Tuesday, Sept. 13 at the Whatcom Museum
Steven Harper
Hello, there!Please join us this Tuesday, September 23, 2025 for the NCAS Program at the Whatcom Museum Old City Hall Rotunda Room, (Social Hour 6:30pm and Presentation 7pm) for a presentation by Nora CarlsonWhen prey attack: mobbing behaviour in birds - Nora Carlson PhD
Mobbing, a behaviour wherein prey harass and attack predators drive them away is a behaviour that, while often overlooked, is fascinating in its apparent counter-intuitiveness. However, although dangerous, this behaviour is quite effective in lowering the chances of individuals being eaten. It is a widespread behaviour that, in birds, includes vocalizations that contain detailed predator threat information, and events often include many different species working together to drive away a predator. This behaviour is also thought to provide additional benefits to both mobbing participants and eavesdroppers, including generating community-wide anti-predator communication networks, and is thought to play a crucial role in shaping species communities. Since I began my scientific career, mobbing behaviour has fascinated me, and I have been fortunate enough to see the variation in the expression of this behaviour across species, contexts, and regions. In this seminar I will talk about what birds communicate in their mobbing calls, and how they do so. Who they talk to, and a bit about how humans may be impacting this communication.
Nora Carlson is a behavioral ecologist who focuses on questions regarding animal communication, predator-prey interactions, vocally mediated mixed-species cooperative behavior, and the impacts of anthropogenic noise on these systems. She obtained her PhD in Biology from the University of St Andrews, Scotland in 2017. Since then, she has held several postdoctoral research positions including as a Marie Curie Independent Research Fellow, a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow, and is currently a Mitcas postdoctoral researcher at the University of Victoria, Canada. Her research has primarily used mobbing behavior (a behavior where prey attack and harass predators) to examine communication and cooperation in mixed-species groups in predator-prey contexts. Currently she is focusing on how anthropogenic noise impacts predator-prey relationships by changing prey behavior and therefore altering their availability and quality to their predators.
Warmly,Steven
