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!”

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Most recent news

Undergrad opportunity: Learn to code course

I will be teaching my “Analytical Tools for Behavior” course (BIOL3017) in Fall 2024. This is a beginner-friendly learn-to-code course based around animal behavior concepts ...
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Undergrad opportunity: Animal care

We are recruiting student volunteers or work/study students to help us provide daily care to our Bobwhite quail in the lab. Students should be able ...
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Undergrad opportunity: Video scoring

We are recruiting student volunteers or work/study students to help with data collection in the lab. Work with PhD student Sanjay Prasher to assist in ...
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New paper!! Inferred Attractiveness

Inferred Attractiveness: A generalized mechanism for sexual selection that can maintain variation in traits and preferences over time Emily H. DuVal, Courtney L. Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth ...
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New paper! Identity information in parakeet calls

Grace has a new paper now out in PLOS Computational Biology! Individual identity information persists in learned calls of introduced parrot populations Grace Smith-Vidaurre , ...
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