Dianne Brunton

Dianne Heather Brunton is a New Zealand ecologist, and former head of the Institute of Natural and Computational Sciences at Massey University. Her research area is the behaviour and cultural evolution of animal communication, especially bird song in southern hemisphere species such as the New Zealand bellbird.

Academic career Brunton grew up in Henderson, and wanted to be a vet from an early age. She joined the faculty of Massey University in December 2004, and founded the university's Ecology and Conservation Group. In 2018, in recognition of the 14 PhD and 18 Master's students she had supervised since joining Massey she was awarded an Individual University Supervisor Medal by the university. At that time she had published over 120 scientific papers and received two Marsden grants.

From 2016 to 2021 Brunton was the head of the Institute of Natural and Mathematical Sciences at Massey, based at the Albany campus in Auckland. She was also a vocal opponent of Massey University's proposal to move most science faculty and courses to the Palmerston North campus.

Research

Much of Brunton's research is concerned with the sexual selection and song of southern hemisphere songbirds; in Australasian and tropical songbird species both sexes commonly sing and maintain territories, but in the northern hemisphere, where most behavioural research has been done, usually only males sing. One study examined the mating behaviour of New Zealand bellbirds (Anthornis melanura), and how females distinguished between the friendly and hostile songs of other females. In 2002 Brunton was the first to quantify the song and singing behaviour of bellbirds; she discovered that both male and female birds have distinctive dialects, and that female bellbirds are the sex that disperses to find new territories. Her testing of the "dear enemy" hypothesis with bellbirds – the first time a female songbird had been tested – revealed they were more aggressive to neighbouring females than to strangers, the opposite of what the hypothesis predicted. She also examines the cultural evolution of bird song: how diversity and dialects arise and are maintained, how song memes spread, and the effect of birds dispersing to new habitats. Another site is Tawharanui Regional Park, north of Auckland, where she discovered by song dialect that the bellbirds which colonised the park had come from Little Barrier Island, not Tiritiri Matangi. In 2013 Brunton received an $820,000 Marsden grant entitled Untangling genes and culture: sex-based song traditions in New Zealand bellbirds, to study male and female dialects;

Her other research interests and collaborations with PhD and MSc students include the welfare of lizard species after conservation translocation, analysing the chemical composition of kākāpō feathers to determine how diet has changed over time, foraging ecology of little penguins (Eudyptula minor), and song dialects in the saddleback (Philesturnus carunculatus).

Selected works