About

Michael Sheehan is an Associate Professor and Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences at Cornell University within the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. His research focuses on behavioral ecology and evolution, with particular interests in animal communication, the evolution of social behavior, cooperation, and the genetic basis of animal signals. His work employs comparative methods, population and comparative genomics, and studies sensory systems, often involving rodents and paper wasps. Sheehan's contributions include advancing understanding of how social bonds influence animal health, the evolution of communication systems, and the genetic underpinnings of behavior.

Research topics

• Biology
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Evolutionary biology
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive psychology
• Ecology
• Psychology
• Zoology
• Cognitive science

Selected publications

• Thromboelastography Associates to Decreased Plasma Transfusions in the Medical Intensive Care Unit: A Retrospective Study

  Critical Care Research and Practice · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Bleeding patients in the medical intensive care unit (MICU) are often coagulopathic, yet the best way to guide blood product resuscitation for the critically ill is not settled. Viscoelastic tests, such as thromboelastography (TEG), are increasingly used by intensivists to guide resuscitation and restore hemostasis. We performed a retrospective study of patients admitted to the MICU at a single tertiary care center in Detroit, Michigan, USA, with a high prevalence of decompensated cirrhosis and septic shock. The historical cohort included patients prior to TEG being available in the MICU. The observational cohort included data where TEG was available and applied in our MICU to guide blood product use. Patients were included if they were an adult > 18 years of age with an initial admission to Henry Ford Hospital MICU who received any blood component therapy. A total of 927 patients met inclusion criteria with 487 (52.5%) patients in the historical cohort and 440 (47.5%) in the observational cohort. Compared with the historical cohort, patients of the observational cohort were administered significantly less plasma (658.3 mL/patient (IQR = 931) vs. 410.8 mL/patient (IQR = 381), p < 0.001). There was no significant difference in mortality (54.4% vs. 50.5%, p = 0.408) or hospital length of stay (LOS) (13 days vs. 14 days, p = 0.08). In a generalized MICU population, the introduction of TEG‐guided blood component resuscitation was associated with conserved plasma without significant effect on mortality or LOS. No causation can be drawn to TEG from the retrospective nature of this study. However, this study provides impetus to further study blood product stewardship potentially derived from viscoelastic test‐guided transfusions in a general MICU population.

  PublisherDOI

• Seasonality of the estrus cycle in laboratory mice under constant conditions

  Laboratory Animals · 2025-03-30 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Seasonality governs every aspect of life in the natural environment. Controlled laboratory settings are intended to keep animals under a constant set of environmental cues with no seasonality. However, prior research suggests that seasonal variation may exist despite aseasonal lab environments. Here, we examined whether the length of each phase of the estrus cycle varied seasonally in addition to seasonal changes in the overall estrus cycle length in a laboratory mouse strain (C57BL/6J) under standard laboratory housing conditions. We found that female C57BL/6J mice exhibited reproductive seasonality mirroring the outside environment, in a controlled "simulated summer" environment. In the winter and spring, females have longer ovulating phases (proestrus and estrus), compared to the fall. Females similarly experience lengthier quiescent phases (metestrus and diestrus) in the summer, compared to fall and winter. Interestingly, females showed no significant variation in overall estrus cycle length across seasons. Notably, females spent more time in ovulating phases across seasons than previously reported. Laboratory mice are sensitive to external seasonal changes, even when housed in standard laboratory environments designed to control light, temperature, and humidity. Humidity is indicated by some analyses as a potential seasonal cue, however, we cannot rule out other unidentified external cues that may provide information about external seasonal changes. These findings represent just one example of how seasonality may impact mouse physiology in laboratory settings, emphasizing the need to account for such influences in biomedical research and improve environmental control in mouse holding facilities.

  PublisherDOI

• The Sikkim mouse ( <i>Mus pahari</i> ) exhibits distinct spatial, circadian, and social behaviors compared to laboratory mice

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-11-13

  preprintSenior author

  ABSTRACT While the laboratory mouse is one of the most studied organisms on the planet, comparative research on the spatial and social structures of closely related Mus species remains limited. Here, we characterize the spatial, circadian, and social behavior of the Sikkim mouse ( Mus pahari ) wild-derived inbred strain PAH/Eij in comparison to the laboratory mouse strain C57BL/6J ( Mus musculus domesticus , shortened to ‘B6’). Using a common garden approach, we monitored mice in replicate mixed-sex group social behavior trials within an indoor mesocosm using radiofrequency identification (RFID) antennae. M. pahari exhibited markedly reduced spatial exploration and highly stereotyped circadian activity that was strongly coupled to the dark phase of the light-dark cycle compared to B6 mice. Most strikingly, M. pahari displayed distinctive social behaviors characterized by strong male-male gregariousness and enhanced overall social tolerance, contrasting sharply with the relatively less social nature of B6 mice. These results demonstrate the genetic influence on social organization within the Mus genus and identify unique socio-spatial phenotypes in M. pahari , highlighting the considerable potential of this strain and species as a novel model for social behavior research.

  PublisherDOI

• Animal behavior: A digger wasp never forgets

  Current Biology · 2025-06-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Linking individual fitness to the evolution of cognition

  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2025-06-26 · 3 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding

  It is well supported that the present diversity of animal cognitive abilities is the result of evolutionary processes, driven at least in part by natural selection. However, the evolutionary dynamics that link individual traits to fitness to macroevolutionary patterns of variation in cognition are much less clear. Is cognitive evolution fast or slow? Does selection tend to act on existing genetic variation or is adaptive cognitive evolution mutation limited? Is there a consistent pattern to the mode and tempo of cognitive evolution across groups or does it vary depending on different social and ecological pressures? Answering these questions will allow us to understand the connections between heritable variation in cognition in extant populations and the divergence in cognitive abilities across species. We review what is currently known about cognition and individual variation in fitness and discuss how fitness observed in current populations may be linked with patterns of natural selection. We provide a brief overview of relevant concepts from the population genomics literature and suggest a research agenda that integrates behavioural ecological approaches with comparative and population genomics data to uncover the patterns of cognition evolution.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Selection shapes diverse animal minds'.

  PublisherDOI

• Pregnancy modulates responses to male odors in house mice

  Hormones and Behavior · 2025-08-08 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ecological Realism Accelerates Epigenetic Aging in Mice

  Aging Cell · 2025-05-21 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  The aging of mammalian epigenomes fundamentally alters cellular functions, and such changes are the focus of many healthspan and lifespan studies. However, studies of this process typically use mouse models living under standardized laboratory conditions and neglect the impact of variation in social, physical, microbial, and other aspects of the living environment on age-related changes. We examined differences in age-associated methylation changes between traditionally laboratory-reared mice from Jackson Laboratory and "rewilded" C57BL/6J mice, which lived in an outdoor field environment at Cornell University with enhanced ecological realism. Systematic analysis of age-associated methylation dynamics in the liver indicates a genomic region-conditioned, faster epigenetic aging rate in mice living in the field than those living in the lab, implicating perturbed 3D genome conformation and liver function. Altered epigenetic aging rates were more pronounced in sites that gain methylation with age, including sites enriched for transcription factor binding related to DNA repair. These observations underscore the overlooked role of the social and physical environment in epigenetic aging with implications for both basic and applied aging research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Competitive social feedback amplifies the role of early life contingency in male mice

  Science · 2025-01-02 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Contingency (or "luck") in early life plays an important role in shaping individuals' development. By comparing the developmental trajectories of functionally genetically identical free-living mice who either experienced high levels of resource competition (males) or did not (females), we show that competition magnifies early contingency. Male resource competition results in a feedback loop that magnifies the importance of early contingency and pushes individuals onto divergent, self-reinforcing life trajectories, while the same process appears absent in females. Our results indicate that the strength of sexual selection may be self-limiting, and they highlight the potential for contingency to lead to differences in life outcomes, even in the absence of any underlying differences in ability ("merit").

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The mouse gut microbiota responds to predator odor and predicts host behavior

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-07-01

  preprintOpen access

  Chronic stressors can alter the mammalian gut microbiota in ways that mediate host stress responses, but the impacts of acute stressors on these interactions are less well understood. Here, we show that brief exposure of wild-derived mice to predator odor altered gut-microbiota composition, which in turn predicted host behavior. We investigated the individual and combined effects of 15-minute exposures to synthetic fox fecal odor and 30 days of chronic social isolation, an established chronic stressor. Using ethological assays, visceral adipose tissue transcriptomics, and genome-resolved metagenomics, we found that predator-odor exposure significantly affected mouse behavior, gene expression, and gut microbiota. Predator odor-responsive bacteria were associated with the expression of genes involved in anti-microbial defense, and host behavioral responses were predicted by random forest models trained on gut-microbiota profiles. These findings indicate interactions between the gut microbiota and wild-mouse responses to the threat of predation, an ecologically relevant acute stressor.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pregnancy Modulates Responses to Male Odors in House Mice

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant F32GM101863

  NIH · $146k · 2015

• CAREER: Evolution of individual identity - processes shaping shaping phenotypic and genetic diversity in animal recognition systems

  NSF · $1.1M · 2018–2024

• Encoding Knowledge in the Genome

  NIH · $2.4M · 2017–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Caitlin H. Miller

  29 shared

• Michael W. Nachman

  Integra (United States)

  25 shared

• Elizabeth A. Tibbetts

  24 shared

• Ke Bi

  Zhejiang University

  23 shared

• Sara Miller

  University of Alabama in Huntsville

  23 shared

• Ann G. Hayes

  18 shared

• Christopher M. Jernigan

  Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center

  15 shared

• Polly Campbell

  University of California, Riverside

  15 shared

Education

• PhD, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

  University of Michigan

  2012