Studying social structure and the evolution of sociality
I participated in a working group at SFI on cumulative culture. I also gave a talk where I discussed the potential for the seeds of cumulative culture to emerge from animal and human interaction rules.
Overview of the working group (from SFI’s coverage here):
Throughout human evolutionary history, individuals have developed new ideas, materials, and technologies, then passed them on to other individuals and groups.
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]
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]
My new paper, “Behavioral flexibility and species invasions: the adaptive flexibility hypothesis”, led by Tim Wright and Jessica Eberhard, has been published.