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Alejandro-Rico-Guevara

Alejandro Rico-Guevara
Associate Professor
colibri@uw.edu
471 LSB
2066852820
Personal website
Accepting graduate students
Fields of interest
Behavior, Biomechanics, Ecology, Evolution & Systematics, Natural History, Physiology

Energetically constrained animals have evolved adaptations to enhance caloric intake. On the other hand, animal competition sometimes turns into physical combat, and particular weaponry evolves. I perform theoretical and empirical research on each of these fronts, and study an unexpected case of their intersection: hummingbird bill weapons. My recent discoveries revive questions dating back to Darwin and Wallace about how these birds budget energy gain and expenditure to enable hovering, the most expensive form of locomotion, establishing coevolutionary relationships with flowers, and a peculiar adaptive radiation. These novel perspectives of a data-rich mutualistic system, open the door to quantitative and comparative assessments of trade-offs between energy optimality and fighting proficiency. I translate the insights from this work into testable hypotheses for a plethora of nectar-feeding animals, and the evolution and constraints of the evolution of combat traits in nature. My research is question-, rather than technique-driven; thus, I pursue cross-disciplinary approaches aimed to achieve a more complete integration across biological levels of organization.

I am the Baepler Endowed Associate Professor at the Biology Department and the Curator of Ornithology at the Burke Museum, both at the University of Washington in Seattle. I did my undergrad in Biology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and my honors thesis with Gary Stiles. I was supported as a Fulbright Scholar for my doctoral studies at the University of Connecticut (UConn), working with Margaret Rubega, and a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley for my postdoctoral research with Robert Dudley. I am also very grateful to have received the Pitelka Award for Excellence in Research, by the International Society for Behavioral Ecology (2016), the Carl Gans Young Investigator Award by the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (2023), an NSF CAREER Award (2024), and the Distinguished Alumnus Award in Science by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2025). I have authored 60 peer-reviewed publications, with 22 as first author, 27 as last (senior/corresponding) author, and 13 journal covers. My work has broadly engaged the public by awakening curiosity and love for nature, having been covered by hundreds of media outlets, translated into many languages, in over a hundred countries, for instance by the NYTimes, PBS, NPR, Nat Geo, and Reuters. My research has also been profiled in 7 nature documentaries/TV series, potentially reaching millions of people. I have especially enjoyed working with TED-Ed and PBS Learning Media on K-12 education resources. Pronouns: Any/No preference. 

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