Peter Marler: Used songbirds as model for language learning

Professor Emeritus Peter Marler, who spent a lifetime studying the call of the wild — first the calls of birds and later of primates — and applying the calls to neuroscience, died Saturday (July 5) at the age of 86.

Marler

Marler’s family had gathered at his longtime home west of Winters to be with him in his final hours. Then, with the Monticello fire approaching, everyone had to evacuate in the early morning hours Saturday. Ultimately, the fire spared the house, but Marler died Saturday afternoon at a Davis nursing home before officials gave the all clear to go home.

Marler, who held emeritus status in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, conducted groundbreaking research in using songbirds as a model for learning language.

Passionate about birdsong since he was a boy growing up in England, Marler noticed that some songbirds show local “dialects.” His research showed that birds raised in the lab learned their songs from other birds; the songs were not innate to the birds from birth. This was the only example in the animal kingdom, other than humans, whales and possibly bats, of cultural transmission of communication.

He found that birds show genetic constraints in how they approach their song development — some learn faster, developing a larger repertoire than others, some are more open to improvising, and others remain faithful to their tutors.

Using playbacks of tape-recorded calls in the field of vervet monkeys, Marler also helped show how the monkeys had distinct alarm calls for different kinds of predators, such as snakes or leopards. And he conducted the first spectrographic analysis of the vocal repertoire of wild chimpanzees.

After previous positions at UC Berkeley and Rockefeller University in New York, Marler joined the faculty at UC Davis in 1989 and helped establish the Center for Neuroscience. He retired in 1994.

He was a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Royal Society, the British equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences.

Thomas North: Did animal-model research in HIV-AIDS battle

Professor Emeritus Thomas W. North, a biochemist who contributed to therapies for HIV infection and AIDS, by way of his groundbreaking discoveries in animal models, died June 23 at the age of 64.

North

He had been a visiting professor here before joining the faculty of the Center for Comparative Medicine in 1997. His laboratory studied feline immunodeficiency virus infection of domestic cats, and simian immunodeficiency virus infection of rhesus macaques at the California National Primate Research Center.

He went from here to Emory University in Atlanta in 2010, to work with the university's Center for AIDS Research and Laboratory for Biochemical Pharmacology.

He was an internationally recognized authority on the mechanisms of drug resistance in immunodeficiency disease.

His research led to the development of the first animal model using RT-SHIV-infected primates, thus enabling studies of potent drugs used in highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, commonly prescribed today to HIV-infected people.

"Students and colleagues remember Dr. North as a dedicated researcher whose creative approaches inspired others to look for innovative solutions to HIV study and treatment," Ray Schinazi, director of the Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology, wrote in an obituary on the Center for AIDS Research website.

North received a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Arizona in 1976 and served on the faculties of Tufts University and the University of Montana before coming to UC Davis.

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