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Summary of Research Interests
WALTER D. KOENIG
Email: koenigwd@berkeley.edu
Curriculum
Vitae Publications
Introduction
to Acorn Woopeckers (article)
Introduction to Synchromy
in Acorn Production (article)
I
have broad interests in the evolution of behavior, particularly in
projects integrating long-term empirical and experimental data on
the behavior, life history, and ecology of individuals. My fields
of interest include social behavior, mating systems, life history
evolution, and sexual selection. Within these fields, I have worked
specifically on questions concerning conflicts and cooperation within
complex societies, the evolution of altruism, sex-ratio evolution,
dispersal, territoriality, and parental care. I have done much of
my work with the Acorn Woodpecker, a cooperatively breeding species
in central California that exhibits both helping at the nest and
a polygynandrous mating system.
I am also particularly interested in the evolution of reproductive
traits in trees and the consequences of variable seed production for
the animals that depend on mast for food. This project began with an
attempt to understand the wide variation in acorn production by oaks
at Hastings Reservation and has grown to include not only studies of
masting in California oaks but investigations of seed production patterns
in temperate and boreal trees on a global scale.
A third area in which I am currently active is that of investigating
patterns of spatial synchrony in nature. Such patterns have implications
for the degree to which species are organized as metapopulations. These
studies have involved the development of statistical techniques that
I have applied to census data on North American birds, dendrochronologies
of boreal trees, butterfly populations, and seed production patterns
of oaks and conifers worldwide.
Finally, I have done considerable work investigating the population
ecology of various North American birds in relation to ecologically
interesting phenomena such as West Nile virus, emergence of periodical
cicadas, and global climate change. Most of this work involves using
large, public databases including the North American Breeding Bird
Surveys and the Audubon Christmas Bird Counts.
My work covers a variety of taxa and evolutionary questions. However, my primary focus is on long-term studies of marked individuals, whether they be birds, dragonflies, salamanders, or trees. My goal is to integrate knowledge of the ecological and evolutionary challenges faced by populations so as to understand the fitness consequences of individual differences in behavior. These kinds of studies lend themselves particularly well to involving students both as undergraduate assistants and as graduate participants. They also offer many opportunities for addressing questions at multiple levels of analysis. Whenever possible, I collaborate with colleagues with expertise in relevant fields so as to address important ecological questions at multiple levels.