I attended the third “Postdocs in Complexity” Conference at SFI, which brings together resident SFI postdocs and postdocs holding fellowships from the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
More information here.… [Read full details]
Community lecture at SITE Santa Fe
I presented a community lecture at SITE Santa Fe (a contemporary art space in downtown Santa Fe) as part of their “Digest This!” series.
I talked about the recent parakeet invasion in Mexico, going in to the biology and natural history of invasions, and how the biological side interacts with the human side through politics, international trade, and regulations.… [Read full details]
SFI collaboration visitor: David Fisher
I invited David Fisher to SFI for a research collaboration visit. We had a great time talking about new ideas, networks, hierarchies, and more all week, and even fit in some hiking at the Tsankawi Ruins.
David gave a talk while he was at SFI:
Estimating Indirect Effects in a Wild and Anti-Social Mammal
Nearly all organisms interact with conspecifics at some point in their lives, and as such can affect one another’s phenotypes.… [Read full details]
SFI Colloquium visitor: Jonathan Pruitt
I invited Jonathan Pruitt to SFI to give a Colloquium talk. This is SFI’s premier talk series, and Jonathan wowed and amazed us with his recent work on social spiders. While at SFI, he also led a Research Jam, an unstructured brainstorming session for early-stage ideas, that has since become a big collaborative review paper involving several SFI researchers.… [Read full details]
Clay-eating parrots, Altmetrics
I was really excited to get news from the Ibis journal that my paper with Don Brightsmith and Gustavo Martinez was the journal’s top-scoring paper in 2017, according to the Almetric score.
A lot of the credit for getting the news out about this paper goes to Jenna Marshall and Katie Mast of the Santa Fe Institute’s Communications department.… [Read full details]
Grant funding for human experiments
Co-PIs Simon DeDeo and Dan Mønster and I received funding from the US Army Research Office to investigate the role of information in conflict. This funding will allow me to make my first foray into experimental work with humans. We’ll be working with undergrads at Aarhus University in Denmark to see how they process and understand social knowledge as they play networked computer games in groups.… [Read full details]
New network metrics
My paper with Dave McDonald was published in the special issue Animal Behaviour, Social Networks (full text). We developed new metrics for weighted social network analyses that were inspired by methods used in population genetics. Our new metrics focus on variance in the strength of relationships, and allow for comparison across different social scales.… [Read full details]
Twitter bird conference
I presented some new research on the global trade patterns of an invasive parakeet in the British Ornithologists’ Union’s first Twitter conference.
Global patterns of pet trade in monk parakeets and connections to species invasions
The global pet trade market moves thousands of animals around the world every year.… [Read full details]
Mexican parrot invasion press, La Vanguardia
My recent paper on the monk parakeet invasion in Mexico was covered by the Spanish-language news outlet La Vanguardia.
From La Vanguardia
Las cotorras argentinas se convierten en una plaga en México
Las políticas comerciales europeas marcan el desplazamiento de la especie
Mexican parrot invasion press, Nature News
Allie Wilkinson did a nice write up of our recent work on the Monk Parakeet invasion in Mexico for Nature News.
From Nature News
Parakeet invasion of Mexico driven by Europe’s ban on bird imports
Attempts to stop the spread of bird flu and protect wildlife had unintended consequences.