 I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Sih lab at the University of California, Davis. Broadly, I am interested in social behavior and ways to study it. Why do animals vary in their social behavior, and what biological consequences does this have? More specifically, what factors influence patterns of social connections, and how is variation in social connectivity related to fitness? Interactions or connections between individuals can have important consequences, and social groups can be represented as networks, or systems of interacting units. For example, here the dots represent individual animals, the lines represent interactions, and the arrows show the direction of the interaction. The color and shape of the nodes give information about the age and sex of the individual. In my dissertation, I explored causes and consequences of social network variation in yellow-bellied marmots, Marmota flaviventris. 
 Read more about the marmots, research, other animals and life in the field in posts by us at the Marmot Minutes. http://marmots-ucla.blogspot.com/ |