Dr. Kelsey Moreno

Dr. Moreno’s PhD is from the University of Southern Mississippi, in Experimental Psychology. She is interested in both the biological and psychological sides of animal behavior. For her dissertation, she worked on deciphering the possible use of bubble production for social communication among bottlenose dolphins, a relatively understudied area of research which involved watching an endless amount of video. At TAU, in the Department of Zoology, Dr. Moreno will work in the Bat Lab for Neuro-Ecology on a project testing the influence of urbanization on the Egyptian fruit bat. Since urban populations have more than doubled in the last 50 years and now contain over half the world’s population, many wild species have experienced dramatic population decline, reducing biodiversity and altering community composition. Dr. Moreno will examine the behavior and brain morphology of animals that thrive in cities, to see how they adapt. TAU has an in-house colony of approximately 50 bats who can be monitored on an individual level at all times. She will use miniature tracking technology (which includes GPS and ultrasonic microphones), MRI, and controlled tasks to compare behavioral and neural differences between urban and rural bats.