Dr. Mark Hauber studies avian recognition systems, animal behavior, bioacoustics, conservation biology, and neuroethology (a multidisciplinary field composed of neurobiology (the study of the nervous system) and ethology (the study of behavior in natural conditions.)
He graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and with his doctorate from Cornell. He is currently head of the Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience doctoral subprogram, Graduate Center, CUNY and a faculty member of the Department of Psychology, Hunter College. Dr. Hauber also holds degrees from the University of Auckland and Victoria University in Australia.
His research specifically focuses on evolutionary hypotheses and ecological contexts of animal behavior. He asks, in general, how animals tell apart their friends from their enemies. As a model system, for example, his own research has focused on brood parasitic birds, such as cuckoos and cowbirds, which lay their eggs in other birds nests. Why does the host accept the foreign egg and chick in its nest and how does the parasite trick the host to provide more food than its fair share? Other projects in his laboratory focus on the development of vocal recognition of conspecifics and mates, the genetic mating systems of socially monogamous seabirds, the migratory dynamics of seabirds and cuckoos, and decision making by monarch butterflies.
He is a Contributing Author of The Chicken: A Natural History.