Jennifer Verdolin is a writer and postdoctoral research fellow at NESCent, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC.
Verdolin’s scientific endeavors are at the interface of animal behavior, molecular biology, and conservation. A central theme is that individual variation in behavior not only affects the social environment of a species but can have profound implications for population level dynamics, including disease transmission. Prairie dogs are a wonderful system that is providing a deeper understanding of these complex interactions.
Verdolin’s writing focuses on the many fascinating aspects of animal behavior, what animals do, how they do it, and parallels with human behavior. Verdolin’s wrtiting has appeared in Scientific American. Her first book, Prairie Dogs: Communication and Community in an Animal Society, was co-authored with Drs. Con Slobodchikoff and Bianca Perla. Her second book is in progress and will examine similarities between human and animal behavior.
