Ha!

As a Miami Hurricane, I will be perpetually annoyed if people call U Minnesota the U.

Questions and comments are always welcome. If you find this framework interesting, humor me and try it out on situations of cross-sexual transfer or emergent dimorphism to see if it holds up. I was pleased it worked here, but science is all about putting things to the test.
Thanks!

This was a fun paper and I'll soon have one out about the brain transcriptomics from these fish (yes Androgen Receptors play a big role). We did this while I was a VP with my own Undergrad research lab. They were amazing in this process...

If you've been thinking about the Challenge Hypothesis, you're not alone. This is complementary. It turns out partner behavior influences observed behavior which correlates with androgens. Thus our evo framework works alongside the environmental one...

For the female larger species we don't see those shifts or a linear correlation with 11KT, but we do see one with T. My guess is females evolved to use T from 11KT as T might have less negative physiological consequences and both interact with androgen receptors (though which ones, we don't know)...

When females take on male biased behaviors plastically they ramp up more than male tamp down 11kt. In fact their 11kt levels exceed males in some cases--more impressive than T for fishes. We removed categories (size and sex) and still found this correlation with 11KT...

For the female larger species we expect that the behavior is already linked to androgens, so they should likewise have androgen correlation (instead of say estrogen). Turns out we're correct for plastic transfer in male larger species, but kind of right in evo transfer female larger species...

We leveraged the evolutionary history of these fishes to infer that the territorial behavior evolved from male-biased behaviors. Thus we expect the behaviors should correlate with androgens (11KT) in the male larger species and females should increase androgens when they become the larger partner..

We know members of Julidochromis have varying preferred partner size relationships (e.g. Male larger than female), but if put in a situation where they can't do that they will switch roles in nesting behavior. This study confirmed that for our target species...

I use this paper when discussing evolution, adaptation, and "just so" stories. This is, in my opinion, what Gould and Lewinton were discussing as a Panglossian view.

Super thankful for my time at Reed College. I got to run a lab, teach, and do some great reseach (more coming soon). Dr. Suzy Renn is an awesome mentor and I can't say enough good things about her.
If anyone has a chance to postdoc at a PUI I encourage them to seriously consider it.