My research aims to understand the biology of social behaviour. My research group asks questions such as: why social relationships are formed and how they are maintained? Why do group-living individuals differ in their tendency to interact with others and in how deeply embedded they are in their social networks? Investigating these differences allows us to determine the genomic, physiological, and neural drivers of sociality, as well as its impact on health, ageing, life-history, and fitness.
Our work focuses on highly gregarious, group-living animals. We work mostly with data collected from wild or free-ranging groups, and specialise on study systems with uniquely long-term datasets. My research group and our collaborators use a diverse set of methods, including techniques from ethology, evolutionary biology, quantitative genetics, life-history evolution, endocrinology, comparative psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.
Our work focuses on highly gregarious, group-living animals. We work mostly with data collected from wild or free-ranging groups, and specialise on study systems with uniquely long-term datasets. My research group and our collaborators use a diverse set of methods, including techniques from ethology, evolutionary biology, quantitative genetics, life-history evolution, endocrinology, comparative psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.