Lab Members

Christina Riehl,
Associate Professor

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. Her Google Scholar page is here.

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.

Qwahn Kent,
Ph.D. student

Office: Guyot 419
email: qk6999@princeton.edu
Qwahn joined the Riehl lab in the fall of 2022 after completing a B.S. in Biological Sciences at Cornell University. During his undergrad, Qwahn studied avian community composition and biogeography patterns in the Northwest Himalaya. He became interested in understanding the social dynamics of cooperative breeding birds in the Neotropics after studying Palmchats (dulus dominicus) in the Dominican Republic.
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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 joined the Riehl lab in 2019 and is interested in studying the evolution of joint territorial defense in monogamous birds. His dissertation focuses on reproductive behaviors and dispersal in the Carolina Wren in New Jersey. 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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Bre Bennett,
Ph.D. student

Office: Guyot 419
email: bb2085@princeton.edu
Bre joined the Riehl lab in 2021 after receiving a B.S. from Villanova University and conducting subsequent field research on Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees in the Curry lab. Bre is interested in the evolution of social behavior and cognition, especially personality, social networks, and problem-solving. Bre's research is motivated by the desire to understand animal behavior in natural social contexts and in the wild. ​

Fengyi (Freda) Guo,
Ph.D. student

Office: Guyot 107B
email: fyguo@princeton.edu
Twitter: @fyguo
Freda began her Ph.D. in 2018 in the Wilcove lab and is also mentored by the Riehl lab. As a conservation ecologist, her dissertation focuses on the stopover ecology and conservation of migratory landbirds in North America. Combining data-driven radar aeroecology and on-the-ground field surveys, she aims to identify stopover hotspots and key habitats for migratory landbirds during the en-route period, thus completing the full-annual-cycle conservation of migratory species. She received her BSc and MPhil at the University of Hong Kong, where she studied biogeography of ants and montane species range shift under global change. Freda’s Google Scholar page can be found here. 

Zach Smart,
Research Affiliate

Zach is now an M.S. student in social work at Columbia University. His undergraduate senior thesis work at Princeton focused on effects of climate in greater anis, for which he conducted field work in Panama for 3 summers. Zach is currently leading a large meta-analysis on nest predation rates in tropical birds with the Riehl lab and a network of international collaborators.
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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).