Walter D. Koenig

Adjunct Professor and Research Zoologist

Lab: Koenig Lab

Email: koenigwd@berkeley.edu
Office phone: (831)659-5981

Full contact information

Research interests

My research emphasizes field studies of marked individuals combined, when appropriate, with laboratory analyses of parentage. The general goal of these studies is to integrate behavioral observations and knowledge of individual histories to answer questions about mating systems, social behavior, dispersal, and reproductive strategies. I am particularly interested in complex social systems such as cooperative breeding, lekking, and coloniality, but am also involved in ecological studies of variable seed production (mast seeding) and spatial synchrony. Many of my students work at Hastings Reservation in Carmel Valley, California, where I usually reside. Current work in my lab includes studies on cooperative breeding in acorn woodpeckers, lekking in wild turkeys, monogamy in the California towhee, micro-evolutionary change in invading house sparrow populations, and the evolution of masting behavior in California oaks.

Selected publications

Koenig, W.D. and M.V. Ashley. 2003. Is pollen limited? The answer is blowinÕ in the wind. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18:157-159.

Haydock, J. and W.D. Koenig. 2002. Reproductive skew in the polygynandrous acorn woodpecker. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99:7178-7183.

Koenig, W.D. 2002. Global patterns of environmental synchrony and the Moran effect. Ecography 25:283-288.

Koenig, W.D. and J.M.H. Knops. 2000. Patterns of annual seed production by northern hemisphere trees: a global perspective. American Naturalist 155:59-69.

Koenig, W.D., M.T. Stanback, and J. Haydock. 1999. Demographic consequences of incest avoidance in the cooperatively breeding acorn woodpecker. Animal Behaviour 57:1287-1293.