Studying social structure and the evolution of sociality
I gave a talk at the Conference on Complex Systems in Thessaloniki, Greece.
My talk was called “Signals of quality vs. individual recognition: A model of the tradeoffs in assessment strategies” co-authored with Eleanor Harris.… [Read full details]
My recent paper, “Social tipping points in animal societies”, led by Jonathan Pruitt, was covered (in French!) by the website Sciences et Avenir.
SFI’s press team wrote up a nice press release for my recent paper, led by Jonathan Pruitt.
From SFI News:
In relatively cool temperatures, Anelosimus studiosus spiders lay their eggs and spin their webs and share their prey in cooperative colonies from Massachusetts to Argentina.
Our new paper, “Social tipping points in animal societies” was published! This was a fun effort with a great group of people, and is my first paper as “anchor author”.
Paper (open access) available from Proceedings B
Animal social groups are complex systems that are likely to exhibit tipping points—which are defined as drastic shifts in the dynamics of systems that arise from small changes in environmental conditions—yet this concept has not been carefully applied to these systems.… [Read full details]
I co-led a working group at Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI) at the Ohio State University this week with Erol Akçay. Along with Mike Levy, we worked on a project called “Dynamic feedbacks between social structure and behaviors”.
The evolution and consequences of social behaviors depend crucially on the
social environment they are expressed in.… [Read full details]
My recent paper, led by Courtney Fitzpatrick, was recommended in F1000Prime as being of special significance in its field by F1000 Faculty Member Susan Alberts.
“This interesting analysis addresses the question ‘are scientists correct in their perception that theoretical biologists and empirical biologists do not engage in sufficient cross-talk to mutually inform each other’s work?’… [Read full details]
Among ecologists and evolutionary biologists, there’s been a long-standing frustration: scientists want theoretical and empirical research to work together, each approach informing the other, but it seems like there isn’t much overlap.
Courtney Fitzpatrick, a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University, Bloomington, wanted to know if that feeling was based on reality.
I gave a research talk at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology (ISBE) meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.… [Read full details]
SFI runs a large program for undergrad summer research projects. The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program here fully funds undergrads to come to SFI for the summer to work on independent research projects.
The group this summer was fantastic and I had a lot of fun interacting with them.… [Read full details]