Sean C. Wilcox
I am a Ph. D. candidate in the Biology Department of UC Riverside in the Clark Animal Aeroacoustic Lab. I earned my bachelor's and master's degrees from Cal Poly Pomona with Kris Lappin. I am particularly interested in the role of individual variation in locomotor performance during courtship, and how this might reflect variation in male fitness.
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I use Black-chinned Hummingbirds as study organisms to investigate the role of flight performance during courtship signaling, and the effect of individual variation of courtship-flight displays on male fitness (i.e., offspring sired) using microsatellite loci for paternity analysis. My research takes place in the lab and in the field around UC Riverside and at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont.
National Geographic Mention
New Publication - Horned Frog Bite Force
HIGHLIGHTS
MY LATEST RESEARCH
This is an example video of a horned frog (Ceratophrys cranwelli) biting a force transducer apparatus to measure bite force. This project was part of my undergraduate research and was recently published in Scientific Reports.
This summer 2017 I continued a project to investigate mating skew in Black-chinned Hummingbirds at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, CA.