Meagan Wong
University of Washington
Department of Biology
Guthrie Hall
Seattle, WA 98195

mizugurl@uw.edu

Biography
Meagan is a senior Biology undergraduate research in the Sisneros lab at the University of Washington. She joined the Sisneros Lab in the Fall of 2009.

Research Interests
Meagan is interested in the energetics and metabolic costs of advertisement call production by the type I or "nesting" male plainfin midshipman fish. Type I males produce advertisement calls or "hums" during the summer breeding season by rapidly contracting their sonic muscles that are attached to the swimbladder. These seasonal mating signals are presumably very expensive metabolically to produce. Meagan plans to examine the metabolic costs that are associated with the production of this expensive adversitement signal by measuring the oxygen consumption rate of type I males during vocal production. In addition, she plans to access the basal metabolic rates of male and female midshipman during the winter (non-reproductive) and summer (reproductive) seasons. In her future research, she plans to investigate the metabolic costs associated with specific acoustic attributes of the male's advertisement call to determine if such signals are condition dependent and related to female mate choice.