This paper started out as an invited talk to the 2018 Animal Behavior meeting in Milwaukee Wisconsin for a symposium organized by Rafa Rodriguez (U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee) called “What Are We Not Asking About The Evolution of Behavior That We Should Be Asking“.
The goal was for all the speakers in the symposium to write up their talks for a special issue for Animal Behaviour. I realized that, to better develop the complexity side, and ground it in complexity science, I needed to bring in some friends.
I roped in Joshua Garland, then also a postdoc at the Santa Fe Institute and my office-neighbor. We spent some time debating fundamental concepts in complexity — fittingly enough, a lot of this debate happened when we were both at the Conference for Complex Systems, that year held in Thessaloniki, Greece. (I presented two talks there, see here and here).
We wrote part of the draft of the paper on a train ride down to Athens for a fun day of brainstorming science and looking at ruins.
Back at SFI after the conference, I started talking with Vanessa Ferdinand about similar complexity issues. Vanessa was a recently-departed postdoc at SFI, who was in the process of moving to a position in Melbourne. We drafted more of the paper pool-side during a break in the Cultural Evolution meeting in Tempe.
Back at SFI after this conference, the three of us decided to bring in Artemy Kolchinsky, also a postdoc at SFI, to get a more rounded perspective on complex systems. Our final team composition was thus: behavioral ecology, cultural evolution, dynamical systems, and complex systems. What a mix!
Interdisciplinary research like this requires lots of thinking time at the SFI foosball table (except Artemy doesn’t play foosball, I don’t know how he gets any thinking done!)
Sasha the science dog did a lot of consulting for us, and took Josh and I on some nice loops around SFI’s hiking trails. The air in Santa Fe is essential for deep thinking.
Turns out combining the perspectives from such a range of fields can be quite tricky. In working with Josh on this paper and another, we hit some bumps in the road. This kind of work can be brain-breaking and small annoyances can quickly escalate into conceptual rifts.
Luckily, my crafty skills with my trusty Cricut machine saved yet another collaboration. This time, I bribed Josh by making him a flock of dragons for the back of his monitor for his office (obviously, Josh loves dragons).
Collaboration saved!
We skyped Vanessa in from Australia for discussions/debates (and found out that Vanessa responds preferentially to parrot-related skype requests) —–
—- and finally finished drafting, editing, and revising.
Paper accepted!
This was a great experience with some great friends. Our collaboration survived three out of four of us transitioning to new jobs, Vanessa moving to Australia (oh, the time zone differences!!), and me preparing to move across the country to Ohio to start my new lab. Much of the writing of the paper also coincided with my (luckily successful) time on the faculty job market last year, including interviews and negotiating. It was a stressful time for all, and I was happy to have some fun science to distract me.
(Here’s me, grinning like a fool and clutching my newly-signed offer letter from the University of Cincinnati)
The wonderful press team at SFI did a nice write up of the final paper, available here.
We really hope this paper is useful to the ongoing scientific debate about animal social complexity.
The paper is available here: [journal website] or [arXiv]
