Research

Research in our lab integrates across multiple biological levels to explore the complex relationships between individuals and their social environment, as well as the consequences this has for ecology and evolution. Why are some individuals more social than others, and what are the costs and benefits of social connectivity? What drives social preferences between certain individuals, and how might this influence evolution? How can individual phenotypes predict group level traits (e.g., social network structure)? Moreover, how might these group level traits influence the fitness of individual group members, leading to feedback loops between individual phenotypes and group level traits? The answers to such questions can help fill crucial gaps in our understanding of the evolutionary implications and selective consequences of animal sociality. Furthermore, our lab draws on sociality research to address fundamental questions in disease ecology, sexual selection, and animal personality (i.e., consistent between individual variation in behavior). We work on a variety of study systems, with our three core systems being California quail, three-spined stickleback, and treehoppers.