Office Location
Offsite

Education
Ph.D. | University Massachusetts-Amherst | 2024
M.S. | East Carolina University | 2018
B.S. | Juniata College | 2015

Dissertation Summary
Variability in the vocal signals of songbirds is likable to languages and dialects in humans. Habitat and food preferences can evolve into changes in beak size and shape, which may in turn alter how a bird sings. When songs vary across populations, what a bird hears as a chick can have a big influence on their own song and mate choices as adults. Katie's dissertation examined how early life social interactions shape song discrimination, how bird brains encode species identity, and how beaks alter fine-scale song structure in songbirds. These factors play a role in determining the boundary between species and subspecies.

Areas of Expertise
Avian Ecology
Avian Behavior
Avian Bioacoustics

Publications
Andes AK, Schroeder KM, Buckley BR, Dabbert CB, and White RA. In press. Northern bobwhite chick survival, growth, and movement in relation to broadcast supplemental feed and drought. Wildlife Biology.

Schroeder KM and Podos J. In press. Correlated divergence of ecology, morphology and fine-scale vocal motor performance among subspecies. Behavioral Ecology.

Schroeder KM and Remage-Healey L. 2024. Social and auditory experience shapes forebrain responsiveness in zebra finches before the sensitive period of vocal learning. Journal of Experimental Biology 227 (21): jeb247956.

Podos J and Schroeder KM. 2024. Ecological Speciation in Darwin’s Finches: Ghosts of Finches Future. Science 386(6718): 211-217. LINK

Schroeder KM and Podos J. 2023. Early exposure to songs of another subspecies enhances song discrimination in wild sparrow nestlings. Animal Behaviour 203: 123-132. LINK 

Schroeder KM and Remage-Healey L. 2021. Adult-like neural representation of species-specific vocalizations in the auditory forebrain of zebra finch nestlings. Developmental Neurobiology 81(2): 123-138. 

Schroeder KM and McRae SB. 2020. Automated auditory detection of a rare, secretive marsh bird with infrequent and acoustically indistinct vocalizations. IBIS 162(3):1033-1046. LINK

Schroeder KM and McRae SB. 2019. Vocal repertoire of the King Rail (Rallus elegans). Waterbirds 42(2): 154-167.

Lansverk AL, Schroeder KM, London SE, Griffith SC, Clayton DF, and Balakrishnan CN. 2019. The variability of song variability in zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) populations. Royal Society Open Science 6: 190273.

Schroeder KM and McRae SB. 2018. Variable laying times among king rails (Rallus elegans). Wilson Journal of Ornithology 130(4): 1036-1041. LINK

Stiffler L, Schroeder KM, McRae SB, Katzner T, and Anderson J. 2018. Quantitative acoustic differentiation of cryptic species: an example with king and clapper rails in eastern North America. Ecology and Evolution 8(24):12821-12831. LINK

Advisor
Dr. Brad Dabbert
Dr. R. Dwayne Elmore

Current CV for Katie Schroeder