2018 – Page 2 – Hobson Research

2018-09-192018-11-15

Social tipping points – new paper

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

Abstract

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]

2018-09-122018-09-17

Working group at MBI

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”.

Project description:

The evolution and consequences of social behaviors depend crucially on the
social environment they are expressed in.… [Read full details]

2018-09-072018-09-18

Article recommended by F1000

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]

2018-08-22

Theory/empiry SFI coverage

[From SFI News]

AUGUST 22ND, 2018

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.

… [Read full details]

2018-08-222018-09-06

Theory/empiry citation networks

[details coming soon!]

link to paper

Press coverage

Scholarly impact

Altmetrics impact

… [Read full details]

2018-08-162018-08-20

Talk at ISBE

I gave a research talk at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology (ISBE) meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.… [Read full details]

2018-08-102018-11-13

SFI Summer REU program

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]

2018-08-062018-08-20

ABS symposium talk

I attended the Animal Behavior Society Conference at the University of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was invited to speak in the symposium “What Are We Not Asking About The Evolution of Behavior That We Should Be Asking“.

I gave a talk called “What are we missing in current measures of animal social complexity?”… [Read full details]

2018-08-052018-08-20

ABS research talk

I attended the Animal Behavior Society Conference at the University of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I gave a research talk called “Signals of quality vs. individual recognition: A model of the tradeoffs in assessment strategies” (co-authored with Eleanor Harris).… [Read full details]

2018-07-212018-08-20

Talk at CSEE 2018

I went to the Conference of the Canadian Society for Ecology & Evolution for the first time. I had a great visit in Guelph and really enjoyed the conference.

I was invited to talk in the Peter Yodzis Colloquium in Fundamental Ecology, which focused this year on “Integrating the Ecology and Evolution of Social Interactions”. … [Read full details]