Peter M. Narins

Peter M. Narins is Distinguished Research Professor in the Departments of Integrative Biology & Physiology, and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. He is a Member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute, Neuroscience IDP, and Center for Tropical Research. A primary area of interest is auditory neurophysiology, with regard to both mechanics and behavior of animal hearing. His research focuses on understanding how animals extract relevant sounds from the often highly noisy backgrounds in which they live.

The techniques Narins and his group use include quantitative analysis of vocal behavior of animals in their natural habitats, followed by single fiber neurophysiological recordings in order to elucidate mechanisms underlying signal processing in noise. The lab work is supplemented by Narins and his colleagues with direct behavioral observations and controlled acoustic playback studies carried out with animals in their natural habitats. This field work has taken place in Old and New World lowland wet tropical forests, African deserts, and temperate forests in South America.

His numerous honors and awards include Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, the 2019 Award of Merit from the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, the Acoustical Society of America’s 2021 silver medal in animal bioacoustics, and election to Fellow of the AAAS, Acoustical Society of America, Animal Behavior Society, and International Society for Neuroethology.