Dr. Nancy Kohn Joins Cottey’s Biology Department
Do salamanders have social lives? Do they remember? Do they learn? Do they ever invite the whole extended family over for an old-fashioned salamander shindig? Cottey’s newest biology professor can answer all those questions — and more. Dr. Nancy Kohn’s expertise lies in animal social behavior and cognition, and how their social interactions impact learning and memory. Dr. Kohn is especially knowledgeable about the red-backed salamander, since she studied with one of the world’s foremost researchers on salamander behavior: Dr. Robert Jaeger. Together with a few of her colleagues, Dr. Kohn co-authored a book with Dr. Jaeger that summarizes his lab’s fifty years of research. “I was his last graduate student,” Dr. Kohn says. As his retirement drew near, colleagues urged Dr. Jaeger to write a book. Dr. Kohn volunteered to help make it happen. “And the organization of the book happened on his front porch.” Published by Oxford University press in 2016, Behavioral Ecology of the Ea