About With Modification

With Modification is a magazine about behavioral ecology and evolution — the science of how animals live, communicate, court, compete, and change. The name comes from Darwin's own definition of evolution: descent with modification. Every living thing is a remix of its ancestors, and the stories here are about the remixing.

The author

I'm Hans Gonzembach, a behavioral ecologist. I earned my Ph.D. in Integrative Biology at Florida Atlantic University studying the songs of Bachman's Sparrow — a bird of the fire-maintained pine forests of the American Southeast — asking how habitat and environment shape the way animals communicate. My research on birdsong and bioacoustics has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Bioacoustics and Florida Field Naturalist.

I also build things: my iOS game, My Aviary Forest, identifies birds by their songs — entirely on your phone — and turns every identification into a little bird that lives in your own cozy forest.

What you'll find here

• Field Notes — stories from my own research and fieldwork
• New Science — landmark new studies in behavior and evolution, translated for curious readers
• First Principles — the big ideas of behavioral ecology and evolution, explained from the ground up

Everything here is written by me, grounded in the peer-reviewed literature, with sources linked so you can go deeper.

Get in touch

Questions, corrections, story ideas: myaviaryforest@gmail.com