Studying social structure and the evolution of sociality
The first new Cincinnati Zoo babies of the year are baby penguins!
Here’s the news from the zoo: http://cincinnatizoo.org/news-releases/little-blue-penguin-hatchlings-kick-off-cincinnati-zoos-year-of-the-penguin/
The zoo is reporting Reuben and Chip as the parents of these two new chicks. Interestingly, in our very preliminary analyses last semester in Penguin Data Club, Reuben was very social while Chip was not (based on RFID tags and swimming data).… [Read full details]
Sajay Prasher joined the lab this week as our first PhD student.
Sanjay did his Masters work Dr. Julie Morand-Ferron in the Department of Biology at the University of Ottowa. His previous work focused on cognition in chickadees (MSc titled “Examining the predictors of technical and consumer innovation in black-capped chickadees”).… [Read full details]
“Penguin Data Club” is a weekly meeting for undergrads at the University of Cincinnati. Working in collaboration with Dr. Katie Kalafut and the Cincinnati Zoo, we will dig into the social lives of Little Blue Penguins.
*** UPDATE: Penguin Data Club meetings in Spring 2020 have been scheduled for Fridays, 3:00-5:00, in Rieveschl 713.… [Read full details]
I was invited to be a lecturer and faculty mentor for the second annual Complex Networks Winter Workshop in Quebec City, Canada. CNWW (pronounced “canoe”) is a one-week crash course in transdisciplinary approaches to complex networks, bringing together biologists, social scientists, mathematicians, and more to learn about a variety of network methods and to conduct independent group projects, all while staying in the historic monastery in beautiful Quebec City.… [Read full details]
This semester, I recruited University of Cincinnati undergrads interested in gaining research experience with a volunteer data analysis opportunity. The students used data collected at the Cincinnati Zoo, and generously shared by Dr. Katie Kalafut, to start to learn how to clean and manage data, run analyses, and code in R. … [Read full details]
I visited OSU this week to give a seminar to the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology.
Thanks to Gerry Carter for inviting me out!
(Photo by Simon Ripperger)… [Read full details]
I visited the University of Nevada, Reno to give a talk in their Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology 2019 Fall Colloquium series. I really enjoyed meeting everyone in the department and had a great visit!
I was also able to finally meet another of my co-authors – it’s weird that science these days can be done solely over email for some projects, without any kind of real or virtual face to face interaction.… [Read full details]
Background: This semester, I started “Penguin Data Club” for University of Cincinnati undergrads who are interested in learning how to analyze and work with data, how to code in R, and to learn about the social lives of penguins. We are collaborating with Dr.… [Read full details]
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“. … [Read full details]
I was excited to return to NIMBioS this week for a working group looking at new ways to think about null models for animal social behavior.