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Specific Interests
I am interested in how individuals assess and react to their environments. This includes questions about how individuals gather information and use that information to estimate the current state of their environment. My work in this area has included investigations of how female threespine sticklebacks visit and assess males, and theoretical investigations of what decision rules produce the highest expected fitness for females. I am currently investigating how evolutionary history and predator behavior shape how prey should use available cues to estimate the current level of predation risk.
How prey behave depends on how predators behave and vice versa. I have been collaborating with Andy Sih and John Hammond to investigate how the spatial distributions prey and predators are shaped by this interaction of prey and predator behaviors. We have used genetic algorithm models to predict prey and predator spatial distributions, and laboratory experiments with Pacific treefrog tadpoles and some of dragonfly larvae predators to view their resulting distributions and the behaviors that form them. Finally, I am very interested in how the behaviors of individuals form the dynamics of larger systems. An example of this work is a collaboration that I am engaged in with Geoffrey Trussell. We are using the green crab and intertidal snail system that Geoff has worked for many years to investigate how the behavior of the snails is affected by the predation risk imposed by the crabs and by state variables, such as the size and hunger of the snails. We are testing whether the short-term behavioral responses of the snails affect the longer-term dynamics of the ecological system. I am currently looking for graduate students to join my lab. I would be interested in students that want to work on questions related to flexible behavior and its context within ecology and evolution. I am particularly interested in having students that want to use empirical approaches to test theory. Selected Publications (a complete list can be found on my CV)
Luttbeg B, Hammond JI, Sih A. The cover of darkness and the space race between dragonfly predators and tadpole prey. Behavioral Ecology (in press) Hammond JI, Luttbeg B, Sih A. 2007. Predator and prey space use: dragonflies and tadpoles in an interactive game. Ecology 88:1525-1535. Wojdak J, Luttbeg B. 2005. Relative strength of trait-mediated and density-mediated indirect effects vary with resource levels. Oikos, 111:592-598. Gabriel W, Luttbeg B, Sih A, Tollrian R. 2005. Environment tolerance, heterogeneity and the evolution of reversible plastic responses. American Naturalist, 166:339-353. Luttbeg B, Sih A. 2004. Predator and prey habitat selection games: the effects of how prey balance foraging and predation risk. Israel Journal of Zoology, 50:233-254. (invited compendium on predation risk) Luttbeg B. 2004. Female mate assessment and choice behavior affect the frequency of alternative male mating tactics. Behavioral Ecology, 15:239-247. Luttbeg B, Langen TA. 2004. Comparing alternative models to empirical data: cognitive models of Western Scrub-jay foraging behavior. American Naturalist, 163:263-276.
Luttbeg B, Rowe L, Mangel M. 2003. Prey state and experimental design affect relative size of trait-mediated and density-mediated indirect effects. Ecology, 84:1140-1150 (Special Feature).
Luttbeg B. 2002. Assessing the robustness and optimality of alternative decision rules with varying assumptions. Animal Behaviour, 63:805-814.
Luttbeg B, Towner MC, Wandesforde-Smith A, Mangel M, Foster SA. 2001. State dependent mate assessment and mate selection behavior in female threespine (Gasterosteus aculeatus, Gasterosteiformes: Gasterosteidae). Ethology, 107:545-558.
Luttbeg B, Schmitz OJ. 2000. Predator and prey models with flexible individual behavior and imperfect information. American Naturalist, 155:669-683.
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