Recent, current, and forthcoming projects
The 15 species of marmots make an ideal experimental system to ask questions about the evolution of social behavior and communication because they live in a variety of habitats, exhibit a range of social systems, and all species emit between one and five types of alarm calls. Past studies have focused on the meaning of these calls. Current work focuses on yellow-bellied marmots at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado to better understand the evolution of alarm calling and social variation, antipredator behavior, as well as how alpine animals respond to climate change. The behavior and population biology of the marmots of RMBL have been continuously studied since 1962. Exciting new research directions focus on the consequences of social relationships, and the importance of ‘stress’ in reproduction, health and longevity. Visit the RMBL Marmot Project website for more information and a comprehensive list of publications.
Links:
The Marmot Burrow , The Marmots of RMBL , Marmot Minutes (blog) , Learn more about the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (and a bit of marmot research) in this RMBL video
Learn about RMBL and marmot research in this 2024 Rocky Mountain PBS video: Gothic’s Outdoor Science Lab
Popular Press:
Science News, Science , Natural History, Los Angeles Times, Audubon Magazine, The Rocky Mountain News, The Aspen Daily News, KBUT Nature Notes-2008 radio interview, The New York Times, Glenwood Springs Post Independent, University of Lousiana, Monroe News, KBUT Nature Notes 2011 radio interview, Vanguardia, also see the special featurette about studying marmots included with the 15th Anniversary Edition release of the film Groundhog Day.
Our long term research was featured in an article in The Scientist in July 2013.
Aspen Public Radio broadcast two pieces about Team Marmot’s work: The Marmots of RMBL, and What Marmots Can Teach Us About Plastics.
An old article from the Fort Scott Tribune I just discovered poking fun at RoboBadger…
Popular press for the PNAS heritable victimization article:
Cosmos, Discover, Live Science, New Scientist, PhysOrg.com, Science News, Wired Science, NPR’s 90-second Naturalist
Popular press about the marmot masculinization work:
BBC, Live Science, National Geographic Daily News
Celebrate groundhog day long enough and the press comes! A fun article from the LA Times.
Our PRSB paper about heritable alarm calls was a hit in German speaking parts of the world
as was our PRSB paper about the delayed benefits of play:
Die Welt, Der Tagesspiegel
Marmots and marmot research featured in a long article in Men’s Journal about climate change and the end of skiing in Aspen, Colorado.
A fun interview about marmots and climate change on WBEZ-Chicago’s EcoMyths radio show.
Our Behavioral Ecology paper about how less popular marmots emit more alarm calls got some press in ScienceShots, and the Times Live.
A fun newspaper article about a couple who has created an amazing video archive of woodchuck behavior.
Dan and Tina’s social network work featured in a long feature in BioScience.
A wonderful video from 9NEWS (NBC Denver) about the soap opera (The book of marmot?!) that is our RMBL study.
Two Groundhog Day inspired essays–in Zocalo Public Square/Smithsonian and the Huffington Post about marmots, science, and reliable sources of information.
A fun piece in Quartz about long-term research and data management featuring the marmots!
Our PRSB paper about increased sociality reducing marmot longevity was featured in the NY Times Trilobites column, The Verge, Cosmos(I wish I’d thought of the Friends with drawbacks title…), Atlas Obscura, and others…
The sorry saga of marmots being attracted to vehicles and ending up hundreds of miles away led to this Crested Butte News piece.
The marmot project, and how long-term field research was being disrupted by coronavirus, was featured on WHYY’s The Pulse
The marmot project was the featured ‘Science Story’ on RMBL’s website in April 2020.
A fun 2020 summer interview on KBUT’s West Elk Word radio show.
Line Cords wrote a great piece for The Conversation about our PNAS paper that showed how summer and winter survival were influenced by different environmental factors.
Dan gave a talk as part of the (FINE) Frontiers in Social Evolution series that’s available on YouTube.
Gabi got some great press for the study of epigenetic aging (and how marmots seemingly don’t age while they are in torpor) in The New Scientist, and in a Medium essay. Dan and Gabi were featured in a variety of places including Inverse.
The press often comes seeking advice from marmot enthusiasts around Groundhog Day and in 2023 NPR came calling! Various investigations into marmot mayhem also seek advice–including the mysterious death of Wiarton Willie–an albino groundhog reported by the Canadaland podcast.
Dan’s 2024 Groundhog Day essay in MSNBC.
2024’s groundhog day marked the release of an expose about the untimely death of Staten Island Chuck!
Madison’s paper on sociality and the gut microbiome was featured in The Scientist.
Lee Dugatkin published an excerpt from his book on animal social behavior featuring the marmots in undark.
Rocky Mountain PBS came out to visit in the Spring of 2024 for a piece on the RMBL Caretakers and the Marmot Project.
Check out Xochitl and Dan’s piece on cumulative adversity and marmot trauma in The Conversation.
We are involved in a number of studies of population dynamics that capitalize on the long-term marmot database (started in 1962). Recent insights have included the vital role of phenotypic plasticity in growth rate that stabilizes the marmot population and a number of studies have begun to focus on longevity and senescence. By understanding drivers of population dynamics we gain fundamental insights into population persistence and extinction.
Virtually all animals are vulnerable to predation at some point in their lives and a key response to predators is flight. Colleagues and I have generated large data sets in birds, mammals, and lizards to understand the evolution of escape behavior. Through many empirical studies and large-scale comparative studies and meta-analyses, we have identified key factors that explain variation in escape behavior. By identifying mechanisms that influence flight initiation distance, we are able to apply this knowledge to understanding human tolerance of wildlife.
Fear is elicited by specific sights, sounds, and smells. What is it that makes sounds scary? Why do certain smells evoke fear in animals? How can knowledge of this be used? In a series of studies with marmots, kangaroos, deer, and people, colleagues and I are studying the biological basis of fear. Recent studies have demonstrated that non-linear sounds (noise, abrupt frequency fluctuations, biphonation, and subharmonics) are uniquely alarming and emotionally evocative to mammals, including, apparently, humans. Specifically, horror film soundtracks have more noise than would be expected, while sad dramatic movie scenes use abrupt frequency fluctuations and biphonation to make us feel scared or sad. Other studies seek to better understand how predator urine can be used as natural repellents, and by doing so, hopefully save many ‘problem’ animals from elimination.
Knowledge of animal behavior can help us conserve and manage endangered species. A common management intervention to recover a locally extinct population is captive breeding followed by reintroduction. Sadly, most of these reintroductions fail, and predation is often implicated as the cause of failure. Previous work focused on detailed studies of predator recognition abilities in kangaroos and wallabies as well as the critically-endangered 
We built tools to inventory animals by detecting, recording, and analyzing their sounds. Among other functions, this enabled behavioral ecologists to study the temporal and spatial dynamics of acoustic communication, and conservation biologists and wildlife managers to acoustically census animals. With NSF support, we developed VoxNet: an integrated software and hardware package which improved existing technology in four main areas: software, near-real time event recognition, energy efficiency, and a much longer communication range.
