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David Kikuchi

Assistant Professor
Department of Integrative Biology

David Kikuchi

Assistant Professor
Department of Integrative Biology

Background

David Kikuchi is originally from the Chicago area. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His thesis looked at the warning signals of coral snakes and their harmless mimics. Following this, he did postdoctoral research at Carleton University (theory and empirical studies of predator decision-making about defended prey), the University of Arizona (how bees learn about flowers), the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (integrating warning signal theory into community ecology), and Universität Bielefeld (theory on individual variation and social learning).

Research

His research explores how animals make sense of vast quantities of information and use it to make adaptive decisions, including learning and innate behaviors. He also studies how an animal's decision-making impacts the evolution of other species, as well as how adaptation and behavior create feedbacks with ecology. He focuses on predator-prey systems, communication, and social learning.

Education

Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill