About Me
As a behavioral ecologist, Persons studies how animal communication and information use influences survival and reproductive success. Persons and his student collaborators use spiders as a model organism to ask questions about female mate choice, parental care, predator-prey interactions, and kin-recognition and also broader questions in the areas of chemical ecology, ecotoxicology, and neuroscience. Some project examples include herbicide effects on spider parental care, the role of fishing spider silk on aquatic insect space use, projectile defecation in purseweb spiders, palatability and toxicity of spotted lanternflies to spiders, landmark navigation learning in spiders, sex pheromone identification, and documenting metal concentrations among arthropods in coal-impacted areas. They also study the behavior of other animals including the relative importance of odor and infrared cues on ball python diet choice, urine-marking behavior in dogs, changes in aggressive behavior among creek chub and brook trout under shifting temperature, and herbicide-induced changes in earthworm seed caching behavior.
Persons teaches the introductory course, Ecology & Evolution and the upper-level courses Invertebrate Zoology, Animal Behavior, Human Evolution & Behavior and a research course for biomedical science majors.
Persons is the Coordinator for the Ecology Program and serve on the Pesticide Advisory Board for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Education
PHD, Univ of Cincinnati
MS, Univ of Cincinnati
BA, Albion College