Marsh Lab · Department of Biological Sciences

How wild birds decide together, and what shapes those decisions.

We study social decision-making in passerines and corvids across a long-term field site and our on-campus aviary — combining behavioral experiments, acoustic monitoring, and movement ecology.

Autumn light at the campus reserve field site

Field site, autumn — campus reserve

Principal investigator

Principal Investigator · since 2017

Dr. Julia Marsh

Associate Professor of Biology

Julia studies how animals use social information to make decisions in noisy, shifting environments. Her work bridges classical behavioral ecology with modern computational tools — acoustic monitoring at scale, hidden-Markov movement models, and field experiments designed to test specific mechanisms rather than describe patterns. She has led the lab's long-term study system at the campus reserve since 2017 and co-directs the department's Animal Behavior concentration.

PhD

A leading public R1 university, 2014

Years in role

Since 2017

Recent funding

National science agency, 5-yr award

Service

Editorial board, two field journals

Meet the team

The people behind the work

Postdoc

Dr. Elena Marwick

Studies cooperative foraging in mixed-species flocks; brings a quantitative behavioral-ecology background from her doctoral work in the upper Midwest.

PhD

Priya Raghavan

Dissertation focuses on signal evolution in territorial calls under anthropogenic noise; lead on the lab's long-term field site.

PhD

Theo Larsen

Works at the intersection of social network analysis and group decision-making in corvids.

PhD

Mei Anwar

Combines GPS telemetry with hidden-Markov movement models to study route choice in migratory passerines.

Masters

Jordan Velez

Investigating how seasonal resource scarcity reshapes dominance hierarchies in a wintering flock.

Masters

Avery Chen

Developing an automated acoustic monitoring pipeline to expand the lab's nocturnal sampling.

Undergrad

Sam Okafor

Field assistant on the territorial-call project; honors thesis on bystander effects in alarm calling.

Undergrad

Lila Park

Working on the lab's video annotation pipeline; interested in machine perception for animal behavior.

Undergrad

Nikhil Rao

Statistics minor; assisting on a meta-analysis of social-information use across passerines.

Publications & output

Papers, posters, preprints, press

01
PaperMarch 2026
Bystander attention modulates alarm-call vigilance in mixed-species flocks
Marwick E, Raghavan P, Marsh J
Journal of Avian Behavioral Ecology
Field experiments show bystander identity, not just presence, predicts vigilance latency.
02
ManuscriptFebruary 2026
Cross-species attention in mixed flocks: evidence from gaze-following trials
Marwick E, Marsh J
preprint, BehavioralEcology preprint server
Manuscript under review; first behavioral evidence of cross-species gaze following in this system.
03
PressFebruary 2026
Public Radio segment on long-term flock studies at the campus reserve
Regional Public Radio
Regional Public Radio — Morning Brief
Eight-minute segment featuring Dr. Marsh and Priya Raghavan at the field site.
04
PosterJanuary 2026
Dominance reshuffling in a wintering finch flock during a multi-week resource shortage
Velez J, Marsh J
Annual Meeting of the Behavioral Ecology Society
Poster session highlighting transient hierarchy collapse and rapid reformation.
05
ManuscriptDecember 2025
When the network goes quiet: cascading effects of high-status removals
Larsen T, Marsh J
preprint, BehavioralEcology preprint server
Simulation paired with field removal experiments in a corvid flock.
06
PressDecember 2025
University Press: 'Bird-call study finds noise is reshaping urban song'
University Office of Communications
University Press Office
Feature on the Raghavan-Marsh noise-pollution paper, distributed to regional outlets.
07
PaperNovember 2025
Noise pollution narrows the acoustic niche of territorial songbirds
Raghavan P, Marsh J
Ecology Letters of the Southern Plateau
Five years of soundscape data show shrinking acoustic space under chronic anthropogenic noise.
08
PressOctober 2025
Local TV: 'Inside a lab that studies bird gossip'
Local TV Station
Local Evening News
Short visit to the lab's observation room and call-playback rig.
09
PosterSeptember 2025
An open-source pipeline for automated nocturnal acoustic sampling
Chen A, Larsen T
Regional Bioacoustics Symposium
Demonstration of an ARM-based field unit and accompanying classifier.
10
PaperAugust 2025
Route fidelity in juvenile migrants under shifting weather regimes
Anwar M, Larsen T, Marsh J
Movement Ecology Quarterly
HMM-based analysis of three migration cohorts reveals declining route fidelity post-fledge.

How wild birds decide together, and what shapes those decisions.

Dr. Julia Marsh

The people behind the work

Papers, posters, preprints, press

Bystander attention modulates alarm-call vigilance in mixed-species flocks

Cross-species attention in mixed flocks: evidence from gaze-following trials

Public Radio segment on long-term flock studies at the campus reserve

Dominance reshuffling in a wintering finch flock during a multi-week resource shortage

When the network goes quiet: cascading effects of high-status removals

University Press: 'Bird-call study finds noise is reshaping urban song'

Noise pollution narrows the acoustic niche of territorial songbirds

Local TV: 'Inside a lab that studies bird gossip'

An open-source pipeline for automated nocturnal acoustic sampling

Route fidelity in juvenile migrants under shifting weather regimes