Research overview
Whether a prey animal hides, flees or counterattacks when faced with an approaching predator influences myriad aspects of its behaviour, ecology and even psychology. It therefore is not surprising that our early observations of coyotes hunting mule deer and white-tailed deer led my students and me in these different directions.
Ecology: Prey behaviour and predator-prey relationships. We still conduct work on the influence of prey behaviour and predator-prey relationships, relying on exceptional observation conditions at our main study site on the prairie grasslands of southern Alberta. Behaviour: Inter-species hybridization and transmission of disease: We are beginning a new project that investigates conditions that facilitates or prevents hybridization between white-tailed deer and mule deer, two species that are able to interbreed and produce fertile hybrid. When conducting this work, we plan to conduct detailed observations of mating tactics and other social interactions that may help to understand variation in the transmission of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a fatal prion disease spreading across North American deer. Psychology: Evolutionary continuity in infant cries and caregiver responses. Another major focus of the lab is the evolutionary continuity in newborn cries and adult responses to these cries. Our discovery that deer mothers respond to newborn cries of diverse species of mammals suggests suggest that a response to infant cues of a different species is not uniquely human, but may instead be the result of sensory mechanisms shared across mammals through tens or hundreds of millions of years of evolution. |
Contact
Dr. Susan Lingle
Associate Professor Department of Biology The University of Winnipeg 515 Portage Ave. Winnipeg, MB R3B 2E9 Canada Tel: (204) 258-2964 Email: lingle.uw@gmail.com 
Lab News
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