Devenport, Lynn D.

Ph.D. (1971, University of Chicago)

Professor,
Animal Cognition and Evolutionary Psychology

ldeven at ou dot edu

My students and I conduct field and laboratory experiments in animal cognition, focusing on how animals use information to solve environmental problems, especially problems related to foraging. Our main study sites are in alpine and subalpine meadows in the central Colorado Rockies where we study behavioral adaptations of golden-mantled ground squirrels and least chipmunks. We also model cognitive solutions to resource uncertainty in a state of the art behavioral laboratory using a breeding population of wild-caught chipmunks that are house uncaged, and tested in open naturalistic environments. The current emphasis is on adaptations to variable environments, such as how animals estimate the value of unknown patches, the value of known patches that vary over time, and how they place and recover caches. Spatial mapping, timing, averaging, categorization and equivalence and some of the cognitive processes under study.

Winterrowd, M.F. & Devenport, L.D. (2004). Balancing variable patch quality with predation risk. Behavioural Processes, 67, 39-46.

Devenport, J., Luna, L., & Devenport, L. D. (2000). Placement, retrieval, and memory of caches by thirteen-lined ground squirrels. Ethology, 106, 171-183.

Devenport, L. D., Devenport, J., & Kokesh, C. (1999). The role of urine-marking in the foraging behavior of least chipmunks. Animal Behaviour, 57, 563-577.

Devenport, L. D., Humphries, T., & Devenport, J. (1998). Future value and patch choice in least chipmunks. Animal Behaviour, 55, 1571-1581.

Devenport, L. D. (1998). Spontaneous recovery without interference: Why remembering is adaptive. Animal Learning & Behavior, 26, 172-181.

Devenport, L. D. & Devenport, J. (1998). Squirrel foraging behavior. In G. Greenberg & M.H. Haraway (Eds.), Comparative psychology: A handbook, (pp. 1081-1101). New York: Garland Press.

Devenport, L. D., Hill, T., Wilson, M., & Ogden, E. (1997). Tracking and averaging in a variable environment: a transition rule. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 23, 450-460.

Devenport, J. A., & Devenport, L. D. (1994). Spatial navigation in natural habitats by ground dwelling squirrels. Animal Behavior, 47, 787-729.

Devenport, L. D., & Devenport, J. A. (1994). Time-dependent averaging of foraging information in least chipmunks and golden-mantled ground squirrels. Animal Behavior 47, 787-802.