Lab Members

Christina Riehl,
Principal Investigator

Office: Guyot 420
email: criehl@princeton.edu
​Click here for CV
Christie studies the ecology and evolution of avian life histories, especially in tropical species. Her long-term research project is on cooperatively breeding greater anis in Panama, with many other projects on the evolution of parental care and mating systems in birds. She is also affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Princeton's High Meadows Environmental Institute, and Princeton's Program in Latin American Studies.

Joshua LaPergola,
Postdoctoral Researcher

Office: Guyot 419
email: jl101@princeton.edu
Twitter: @DoctorScience7
​Josh studies the behavior and natural history of tropical birds and the ecology and evolution of sociality. His current postdoc project focuses on collective decision-making in greater anis and using double-digest RAD sequencing to understand kinship patterns in several tropical bird species. Josh earned his M.S. at Villanova University and his Ph.D. at Cornell University, where he studied coloniality in the Hispaniolan Woodpecker. In his spare time, Josh shares his love of nature with his son and daughter, attempts to ensure their survival to adulthood, and dabbles in painting and drawing. Check out his website here.

Cynthia Ursino,
Postdoctoral Researcher

Office: Guyot 419
email: cursino@princeton.edu
 ​Cynthia received her Ph.D. in 2016 from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, studying the evolution of host-parasite interactions between the specialist Screaming Cowbird and its primary host, the Baywing. As a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Riehl lab, her work focuses on the mating system and population genetics of the Shiny and Screaming Cowbird. Using field work and genetic tools, she is interested in understanding whether ecological pressures can favor the evolution of social and genetic monogamy in species without parental care. 

Meghan Strong,
​Project Manager

Office: Guyot 419
email: mstrong@princeton.edu
Meghan is interested in questions regarding group decision-making processes, and the evolutionary origins of sociality in a variety of group-living species (primates and birds alike!). For her Master’s thesis in Anthropology, she conducted a study on black-handed spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, where she became fascinated by the Greater Ani project. She is currently managing the nest monitoring program and is involved in many aspects of lab and field data analysis.

Amanda Savagian,
Ph.D. student

Office: Guyot 419
email: savagian@princeton.edu
Amanda is a fifth-year PhD student interested in social behavior and communication. She has a background in primatology, but has also worked with brown-headed cowbirds and gray wolves. Her PhD research focuses on the functions of communal chorusing and the dynamics of parent-offspring conflict in the greater ani. Amanda is the current vice president for Graduate Women in Science & Engineering and a Princeton Program Representative for Científico Latino. Formerly a co-founder and coordinator for EEB Scholars, a graduate student representative on EEB’s Committee on Climate for All, and an EEB Women in Science Partnership group leader.
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Maria Smith,
Ph.D. student

Office: Guyot 419
email: mgsmith@princeton.edu
Maria joined the Riehl Lab in fall 2017 as a Ph.D. student after receiving her B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University.  Maria's work focuses on parental care and social behavior in birds.  Her dissertation work is exploring individual variation in parental care, including how group members in the communally nesting Greater Ani divide up parental care workload and whether they show division of labor (specialization on different tasks).  Other topics of interest include parental coordination of feeding visits in both biparental and cooperatively breeding bird species.  Maria's Google Scholar page can be found here.

Trey Hendrix,
Ph.D. student

Office: Guyot 419
email: thendrix@princeton.edu
Trey is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Riehl lab and is interested in studying the evolution of joint territorial defense in monogamous birds. He received his B.S. from Tulane University, where he studied fairywren behavior in the nonbreeding season and the effects of fungal endophytes on coastal plants. He is also active in the Prison Teaching Initiative and the EEB Scholars program at Princeton University.

Severine Hex,
Ph.D. student

email: shex@princeton.edu
Severine began her Ph.D. in 2018 and is co-advised by the Rubenstein and Riehl labs. She is interested in the ecology and evolution of animal communication, including the relationship between communicative and social complexity. Her Ph.D. research focuses on multimodal communication and social complexity in equids, particularly the plains zebra. 
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Willow Dalehite,
Senior Thesis student

Willow has been working with the Riehl Lab for two years, first with an internship from the High Meadows Environmental Institute (mentored by Amanda Savagian) and now as a senior thesis student in EEB. She is also planning to obtain certificates in Latin American Studies and Portuguese. She loves many aspects of ecology, but is especially interested in bird behavior, tropical ecology, and ecosystem dynamics. She is the president of the Princeton Birding society, and in her free time loves petting her cat, cooking yummy meals, knitting, and making visual art. ​

Emily Sharp,
Senior Thesis student

Emily is an EEB concentrator planning on a career in veterinary medicine, specializing in wildlife medicine. She is currently conducting senior thesis research on the begging behavior of brood parasitic cowbird nestlings (mentored by Cynthia Ursino), and is pursuing a certificate in Spanish.

Zach Smart,
Research Affiliate

Zach is a former senior thesis student and honorary lifetime member of the Riehl Lab, having worked on anis in Panama for 3 summers. A paper based on his senior thesis research, on the effects of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation on ani breeding biology, is in revision at the Journal of Avian Biology. Zach is now working full-time at a soup kitchen in Boston while pursuing an independent project with Christie on nest predation rates in tropical landbirds.
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Dan Baldassarre,
Postdoc Alum

Dan is now an assistant professor of Ornithology at SUNY Oswego. His postdoctoral project in the Riehl lab focused on the phainopepla, a passerine thought to be an itinerant breeder. Using a combination of GPS tracking and phylogeography, Dan confirmed that individuals move between two distinct breeding areas with an "extra" migratory movement in between. His research paper was the cover article for the Auk (here).