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Phone: (612) 625-5700
Fax: (612) 624-6777
Email: wiggins@umn.edu

University of Minnesota
Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior
100 Ecology Building
1987 Upper Buford Circle
St. Paul, MN 55108

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Mark Bee

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior

Ph.D., University of Missouri, 2001

Contact Information

Phone: 612-624-6749
Fax: 612-624-6777
E-mail: mbee@umn.edu

Graduate Faculty Memberships

Research Interests

• Acoustic communication
• Aggression
• Auditory perception and neurophysiology
• Auditory scene analysis and the "cocktail party problem" in animals
• Behavioral plasticity and learning
• Honest signaling
• Sexual selection (female mate choice & male-male competition)
• Sound pattern recognition and sound localization
• Territoriality
• Vocally mediated social recognition

Statement

My research takes an integrative, comparative, and multi-disciplinary approach that draws on questions and methods from behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, comparative psychology, human psychoacoustics, and neurophysiology to investigate animal behavior, in general, and animal acoustic communication, in particular. In my lab, we integrate mechanistic and evolutionary studies to provide answers to fundamental questions about animal communication: (i) How do animals encode information about themselves in acoustic signals? (ii) How do animals acquire information about other conspecifics through the perception of acoustic signals? (iii) How do these processes function in natural habitats and noisy social environments? And (iv) how do these processes evolve? My principal study organisms are frogs, in which acoustic communication mediates species recognition and sexual selection in terms of both female mate choice and male-male competition.

My research currently focuses on two major questions. First, what is the role of acoustic signaling in mediating the aggressive male-male interactions that arise from sexual selection and take place in social environments that are both temporally and spatially variable? In this context, my work investigates vocally mediated social recognition, behavioral plasticity, learning, and honest signaling in male frogs that defend calling sites or breeding territories, such as bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana), green frogs (Rana clamitans), spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer) and strawberry dart-poison frogs (Dendrobates pumilio). Second, how do females perceive the calls of a male in the noisy social environment of a dense chorus? In this context, I am investigating questions related to “auditory scene analysis” and the “cocktail party problem” – two phenomena known from human hearing research – to understand how the anuran auditory system forms “auditory objects” of acoustic signals and segregates the signals of one male from the background noise of a chorus. This new aspect of my work will focus on female gray treefrogs (Hyla versicolor), which are native to Minnesota, and túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus), which are found in Central and South America.

Selected Publications

Bee MA (in press) Selective phonotaxis by male wood frogs (Rana sylvatica) to the sounds of a chorus. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Buschermöhle M, Feudel U, Bee MA, Klump GM, and Freund J (in press) Signal detection enhanced by comodulated noise. Fluctuation and Noise Letters

Gerhardt HC and Bee MA (in press) Recognition and localization of acoustic signals. In: Hearing and Sound Communication in Amphibians (eds. Feng AS and Narins PM), Springer Handbook of Auditory Research. Springer: New York.

Bee MA (in press) Animal communication: Individual recognition in animal species. In: The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics: Volume 2 (section editor, Naguib M), Elsevier Science.

Bee MA and Klump GM (2005) Auditory stream segregation in the songbird forebrain: Effects of time intervals on responses to interleaved tone sequences. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 66, 197-214.

Bee MA and Klump GM (2004) Primitive auditory stream segregation: A neurophysiological study in the songbird forebrain. Journal of Neurophysiology, 92, 1088-1104.

Bee MA (2004) Within-individual variation in bullfrog vocalizations: Implications for an acoustically mediated social recognition system. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 116, 3770-3781.

Bee MA (2003) A test of the “dear enemy effect” in the strawberry dart-poison frog (Dendrobates pumilio). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 54, 601-610.

Bee MA (2003) Experience-based plasticity of acoustically evoked aggressive behavior in a territorial frog. Journal of Comparative Physiology A., 189, 485-496.

Marshall VT, Humfeld SC, and Bee MA (2003) Plasticity of aggressive signalling and its evolution in male spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer). Animal Behaviour, 65, 1223-1234.

Bee MA and Gerhardt HC, (2002) Individual voice recognition in a territorial frog (Rana catesbeiana). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B, 269, 1443-1448.

Bee MA (2002) Territorial male bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) do not assess fighting ability based on size-related variation in acoustic signals. Behavioral Ecology, 13, 109-124.

Bee MA and Gerhardt HC (2001) Habituation as a mechanism of reduced aggression between adjacently territorial male bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 115, 68-82.

Bee MA and Gerhardt HC (2001) Neighbour-stranger discrimination by territorial male bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana): I. Acoustic basis. Animal Behaviour,, 62, 1129-1140.

Bee MA and Gerhardt HC (2001) Neighbour-stranger discrimination by territorial male bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana): II. Perceptual basis. Animal Behaviour, 62, 1141-1150.

Additional Links

Animal Communication Lab Homepage