I am a behavioral and evolutionary neuroscientist. The goal of my teaching and research endeavors is to explain how phenotypic variation in vertebrate brain organization leads to adaptive behavioral phenotypes. I communicate these ideas through the courses that I teach and the seminars and symposia that I particiapte in each year both nationally and internationally. It is in the same adaptive context that my research projects use sound-producing/ vocalizing teleost fish as model systems to establish the operating principles of the vocal and auditory systems of vertebrates.