Members of the Hobson Lab are biologists who specialize in animal behavior, behavioral ecology, cognitive ecology, social cognition, social network analysis, and computational biology.

Research in the Hobson Lab focuses on social information:

What do animals know about their social worlds, how do they come to know it, and what do they do with that information?

To address these questions, we integrate aspects of ecology and evolution to determine how the combination of sociality and cognition affect the emergence of group social structures from a combination of individual-level social actions, cognitive abilities, and decisions about future interactions. Detecting the use of social information provides new insight into the connections between social decisions and cognitive processing, how they can be affected by ecological dynamics, and how they can lead to the evolution of complex sociality.

The Hobson Lab is led by Dr. Elizabeth Hobson and was started at the University of Cincinnati in August 2019. For information about joining the Hobson Lab, please visit “Join the Lab!”

Updates by category (all news & updates here)

Most recent news

New paper: first impressions don’t predict bat relationships

New paper on vampire bat social relationships is now out! Long-term cooperative relationships among vampire bats are not strongly predicted by their initial interactions. Gerald ...
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Emily wins Katma award with Inferred Attractiveness!

Congratulations to Emily DuVal on winning the Katma Award! The AOS Katma Award recognizes papers proposing ideas or testing theories that replace current dogma or settled opinion ...
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New paper! BatGame to introduce R

Our BatGame paper is out! This is an engaging way to introduce undergrads to the power of R and coding in biology. An interactive online ...
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Hobson Lab grant & award announcements!

Thanks Mike for a nice update on activities in my lab! Full story available here UC biologist unlocks secrets of animal sociality Researcher uses prestigious ...
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Hobson Lab at ABS!!

The bulk of my lab will be at the annual Animal Behavior Society conference next week. Come check out our suite of talks!! Elizabeth A ...
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