Studying social structure and the evolution of sociality
Eli Strauss, Dai Shizuka, James Curley, and I recently co-edited a special issue all about dominance hierarchies. For the issue, Eli led a new paper that compiles datasets on over 100 species for which dominance data have been published. Our team also built an R package to more easily manage these datasets (to make comparative analyses much easier) and to run basic dominance hierarchy summaries. … [Read full details]
Eli Strauss, Dai Shizuka, James Curley, and I recently co-edited a special issue all about dominance hierarchies. It was just published in Phil Trans B.
Eli led a nice introduction to the issue that integrates some classic quotes and thinking about dominance hierarchies with modern approaches to highlight new insights and connections with the foundations of the field. … [Read full details]
Our paper on reference models for social network analysis was just published! This paper was the result of a great workshop at NIMBioS and involved a lot of consensus-building and critical thinking about how we infer patterns from social network data.… [Read full details]
I participated in writing a paper, led by David Fisher, Julia Kilgour, and Erin Siracusa, where we summarize the existing evidence on how changes in abiotic environmental conditions may impact intraspecific social interactions.
The paper is available (open access) here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12772… [Read full details]
Hobson Lab undergraduate researcher Austin Simon worked with us this year on data from the Cincinnati Zoo’s Little Blue Penguin population. We collaborate with Dr. Katie Kalafut, who founded the use of automated RFID data collection on the penguins at the zoo.… [Read full details]
I helped out with a new paper that was just published “Satellite telemetry reveals complex migratory movement patterns of two large macaw species in the western Amazon basin” (led by Don Brightsmith, with Janice Boyd and C J. Randel).
Full text available here.… [Read full details]
We have a new preprint out, this time about networks + ants!
Our paper uses an existing dataset on ant social interactions to ask a new question: are the history of interactions and information flow within colonies important predictors of task switching?… [Read full details]
Our lab has a new preprint out! Led by Hobson Lab Postdoc Annemarie van der Marel, we weighed the pros and cons of six behavioral observation apps.
We’ve had the idea for this paper in mind ever since Annemarie went through the app selection process in Feb 2020 to figure out our data collection protocols for our first parakeet field season.… [Read full details]
My collaborators and I recently posted an update to our preprint “A guide to choosing and implementing reference models for social network analysis”. The paper is a result of a working group meeting at NIMBioS in fall 2019 called “Null models for social behavior“.… [Read full details]
My new paper was published! This project was the result of my long-term collaboration with Simon DeDeo (Laboratory for Social Minds, Carnegie Mellon) and Dan Mønster (Interacting Minds Center & Cognition and Behavior Lab, Aarhus University).