Rebecca M. Calisi Rodriguez

Rebecca Marie Calisi (born September 13, 1979) is an American neuroendocrinologist, wildlife biologist, and National Geographic Explorer. She is an Associate professor of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis. She leads a research team that studies how the brain controls sexual behavior, reproduction, and parental care, and how this changes under stress. As the Director for Science Communications at UC Davis, she studies science communication and advocates for inclusivity, equity, and diversity in STEM.

Early life and education Calisi was born in Dallas, Texas, on September 13, 1979, to a Mexican-American mother, Dolores Rebecca (née Rodríguez), and an Italian-American father, Anthony Paul Calisi. When not in school, she spent a lot of her time on her maternal grandparents cattle ranch near the Texas-Mexico border. Constantly being surrounded by animals developed her passion for animal behavior from a young age, but also had a talent for fine arts.

After completing her Bachelors of Arts in 2001, Calisi returned to Texas and was hired by the Dallas Independent School District as an Elementary School Teacher and an English as a Second Language Instructor for kindergarten through the 4th grade. Calisi stayed in this role for one year before being recruited by the Dallas Zoo and Aquarium in 2002 to teach and develop curricula for grades K-12. Her research project involved studying the mating habits and coloration of a species of spiny lizard called Sceloporus pyrocephalus in which the females are brightly colored and aggressive. She uncovered what hormones were driving changes in female coloration and aggression. Calisi sought to understand the endocrine mechanisms regulating coloration and found that higher cortisol levels were associated with less outstanding coloration and higher testosterone and estradiol were associated with more conspicuous coloration.

Interaction between stress and reproduction in avian models Calisi decided to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley within the Department of Integrative Biology. Under Bently's mentorship, Calisi first explored how stress modulates the reproductive axis via interactions with the hypothalamic gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH) system. They found that stress, specifically in the spring, leads to increased activity of the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) as well as increased expression of GnIH cells suggesting that the impact of stress on the PVN and the GnIH system is dependent on the phase of the reproductive cycle.

After finishing her graduate studies in 2010, Calisi conducted postdoctoral studies under the mentorship of Dr. John Wingfield, at UC Davis and Dr. Timothy Q. Gentner at UC San Diego. She studied how hormonal fluctuations in adulthood affect learning. Birds given high doses of E2 exhibited better accuracy in auditory tasks when photostimulated but worse accuracy when photosensitive.

Calisi was quickly recruited back to the West Coast in 2015 by the University of California, Davis where she took on multiple faculty titles. Her lab explores the genetic changes that occur in the brain that underlie parental behaviors and they further look at how insults to the stress system affect genomic activity in brain regions implicated in reproduction. Since her lab focuses on birds as a model organism, specifically pigeons, Calisi and her colleagues found that feral pigeons could provide an honest indicator of lead in NYC, that blood lead levels were highest in the summer and that pigeon blood lead levels were mirrored in children in those neighbourhoods. As pigeons could provide a potent indicator of other environmental pollutants, Calisi has been supported by UC Davis to extend her research to look for evidence of other environmental toxins in pigeons that mirror neighbourhood level toxin load.

Neurogenomics and reproduction Calisi's group also focuses on exploring sexually dimorphic gene expression throughout the tissues of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Gonadal (HPG) axis. Their analysis showed that sex-differences are evident along this axis, such as differences in androgen receptor, prolactin, and arginine vasopressin receptor 1A that highlight the critical need to for sex parity in further research on reproductive function and health. They found that female rock doves exhibited increased responses to stress at all levels of the HPG axis compared to males and these many of the changes were in genes that are uniquely responsive in females. In study in 2019, Calisi explored how pesticides impact gene expression and reproductive behavior in fish. After having her first child, Calisi became aware of the lack of support for mothers in science in terms of lack of spaces for lactation at work and conference settings, lack of child-care at conferences, and a lack of an open culture that supports mothers in STEM from early on in the pipeline. After one particular conference, Calisi noticed the lack of suitable lactation rooms and she organized a working group of 45 mothers in science to speak up about the issue and request basic needs to support mothers working in academia when they are required to attend conferences. Her writing has been featured in the Scientific American as well where she discusses the "publish or perish" culture of academia not being compatible with supporting a family, and that the majority of this burden is placed on mothers making it even harder for women to stay competitive in academia beside their male peers.

In Calisi's work with the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS), she has been further focusing on making sure that a culture of inclusivity extends to typically underrepresented background in STEM. Calisi was honored with the role of Science Communications Creative Strategist for the NIH Director's Office Data Commons Project.

Awards and honors 2019-2024 National Science Foundation Grant - "Single Parenting in a Bi-Parental System: Discovering Changes in Brain, Behavior, and Reproductive Success" - IOS CAREER award 2018-2019 National Geographic Explorer Award - National Geographic Research and Exploration Award 2016 Environmental Health Science Faculty Scholar Award Center for Environmental Health Science - University of California, Davis 2010-2013 Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship - National Science Foundation 2009-2010 Ford Dissertation Fellowship - National Research Council 2008 Best Presentation of Scientific Research - Division of Neurobiology, Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology

Select publications Ligocki, I.Y., Munson, A., Farrar, V., Viernes, R., Sih, A., Connon, R.E., Calisi, R.M. 2019. Ecologically relevant concentrations of bifenthrin affect the expression of estrogen and glucocorticoid receptors in brains of female western mosquitofish. Aquatic Toxicology. 209:121-131. Calisi, R.M., Austin, S., Lang, A., MacManes, M. 2018. Sex-biased transcriptomic response of the reproductive axis to stress. Hormones and Behavior. 100, 56–68. COVER. Ondrasek, N.R., Freeman, S.M., Saldana, E., Orellana Bonilla, I., Bales, K.L. and Calisi, R.M. 2018. Nonapeptide receptor distributions in promising avian models for social neuroecology. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2018.00713 MacManes, M., Austin, S., Lang, A., Booth, A. Farrar, V. and Calisi, R.M. 2017. Transcriptomics reveals patterns of sexually dimorphic gene expression in an avian hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. Scientific Reports. 7:45125 Calisi, R.M., Chintamen, S.*, Ennin, E.*, Kriegsfeld, L.J., Rosenblum, E.B. 2017. Neuroanatomical evolution in response to a changing environment. Journal of Herpetology. 51:258-262. Cai, F.* and Calisi, R.M. 2016. Seasons and neighborhoods of high lead toxicity in New York City: the feral pigeon as a bioindicator. Chemosphere, 161: 274–279. Calisi, R.M. and MacManes, M. 2015. RNAseq-ing a more integrative understanding of animal behavior. Current Opinions in Behavioral Sciences, 6: 65–68. Calisi, R.M. and Saldanha, C. 2015. Neurohormones, brain and behavior: A comparative approach to understanding rapid neuroendocrine action. Integrative and Comparative Biology. Calisi, R.M., Rizzo, N.O.*, Bentley, G.E. 2008. Seasonal differences in hypothalamic EGR-1 and GnIH expression following capture-handling stress in house sparrows (Passer domesticus). General and Comparative Endocrinology, 157(3): 283–287. Calisi, R.M. 2006. Proximate and ultimate mechanisms associated with female coloration in the Mexican boulder spiny lizard, Sceloporus pyrocephalus. Master's Thesis, University of Texas, Arlington, University of Texas Publishing Press, 4396 2.