Emily Levy
Office Location
Dr. Levy started at SHU in fall 2024. She loves to teach and mentor SHU students in the classroom, in the field and in the lab. Dr. Levy studies local birds to understand how an animal's environment can affects its physiology, morphology, health and fitness. Please reach out if you're interested in joining the lab!
Degrees & Certifications
- Postdoctoral researcher, Indiana University Bloomington, 2022-2024
- Ph.D., Duke University, 2022
- BA, Williams College, 2013
Teaching Responsibilities
- Anatomy & Physiology
- Neurobiology
Awards & Fellowships
- Graduate Research Fellowship Program, National Science Foundation, 2018
- James B. Duke Fellowship, Duke University, 2016
- Sara Sparrow Fellowship in Clinical Neuroscience, Yale University, 2013
Research Interest
I am a behavioral ecologist and physiologist. I study how an animal's outside environment like early-life adversity or social competition get 'under the skin' to affect behavior, physiology, morphology and fitness. My lab primarily studies bluebirds and house sparrows - backyard birds that are really fun to work with! We use a combination of field experiments and lab techniques to ask how the outside environment gets under the skin. Reach out if you are interested in joining the lab!
My postdoctoral research was in Kim Rosvall's lab at Indiana University where I studied the evolution and mechanisms of aggression in female songbirds. I studied several highly aggressive species to ask what's going on in female brains when they are aggressive and whether the brain's response to aggression has evolved similarly or differently across species.
My doctoral research was in Susan Alberts' lab at Duke University. That work explored how early-life and adult environments are associated with physiology, morphology and behavior. I did this research by studying a population of wild baboons in Kenya observed by the Amboseli Baboon Research Project.
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