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. She attended Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she studied studio art and theater. Some of her theater classmates included Lake Bell and Jon Bernthal. Calisi later moved to Massachusetts where she attended Boston College, majoring in cultural psychology and minoring in studio art. 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. There, she was commissioned to paint a mural for the zoo's education center. During this time, Calisi spent many hours volunteering on various animal conservation projects. The biologists she worked with noted that she had a talent for research and encouraged her to pursue a graduate degree in the science. She earned a Masters in Biology at the University of Texas, Arlington. 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 completed her Masters in 2006.
Mexican Boulder Spiny Lizards During her Masters, Calisi published several first-author papers exploring the physiology of the female Mexican boulder spiny lizard (Sceloporus pyrocephalus). A striking observation is that the female lizards have much brighter and more intense coloration than the males. 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. She reported these findings in her Masters thesis, "Proximate And Ultimate Mechanisms Associated With Female Secondary Coloration In The Mexican Boulder Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus pyrocephalus)", and proposed that color is an honesty signal of reproductive status in females and that these findings should modify our concept of sexual selection to be more inclusive to female coloration and behavior.
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. She was still driven to understand the biological underpinning of parental care behavior, and felt that the best possible organism to study this in was birds so she joined the lab of Dr. George Bently. Under Bently's mentorship, Calisi first explored how stress modulates the reproductive axis via interactions with the hypothalamic gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH) system. Since GnIH is known to down-regulate sexual behavior in birds, this was an important aspect of the reproductive system to probe due to its regulatory function. 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. For her thesis work, Calisi showed the effects of both stress and the social environment on GnIH and she found that stress hormone receptors are expressed on GnIH cells which highlights a direct mechanism by which stress can regulate reproductive behavior in birds. 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. Calisi and her colleagues found that circulating estradiol (E2) levels in combination with changes in the photoperiod affect learning in different ways. Birds given high doses of E2 exhibited better accuracy in auditory tasks when photostimulated but worse accuracy when photosensitive. Funded by the National Science Foundation and well as the University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship, Calisi continued to explore how neuroendocrine and molecular factors influence reproductive and sexual behaviors in birds as a postdoctoral researcher under the mentorship of Dr. Erica Bree Rosenblum and Dr. Lance Kriegsfeld from 2013 until 2014.
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