Group members - SULab
We welcome informal inquiries about Master students, PhD candidates or Postdoctoral projects. Please send a mail to Cédric Sueur for any research proposal.
Dr. Prof. Cédric Sueur
Cédric Sueur is Full Professor (Professeur des Universités) at the University of Strasbourg. He is mainly working on animal behaviour and specifically on social networking and decision-making in animal groups at the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (Département d’Ecologie, Physiologie, Ethologie). He got the Young Scientist Award from the French Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour in 2013 and the Primates Social Impact Award in 2017. He is also fellow of the University of Strasbourg - Institute for Advanced Study and of the French Academic Institute. Cédric Sueur is at the head of an international (French and Japanese) research project on animal behavioral complexity.
Contact: cedric.sueur@iphc.cnrs.fr
Research Enginneers
During university research in psychology, Quentin specialized in emotional attention, showing how high-level cognitive and social factors can modulate attentional capture by emotional information. After this, Quentin co-founded PSEEKO to address practical problems faced by companies and communities using behavioral science, focusing on improving Quality of Life at Work (QVT). Later, Quentin returned to academic research to tackle societal issues and joined Anthropo-Lab as a research engineer on the Pr Cycl project, aiming to reduce risky behaviors among cyclists and scooter users.
PhD Students
Julien Paulet holds a master's degree in ethology and ecology from Jean Monnet University and is beginning in 2024 PhD position on "AI Automation of Animal Behavior Recognition in the Wild: A Study on Japanese Macaques." He completed a six-month internship under Shinya Yamamoto and Cédric Sueur, developing an AI for facial recognition of Japanese macaques in Koshima. Julien's expertise includes data development, training, collection, and management for deep learning, particularly in natural settings.
Héloïse Vesque-Annear
Héloïse Vesque-Annear has a master's degree in Ethology and a master's degree in Management of Preclinical Experimentation and Animal Ethics. She is interested in the importance of intra- and interspecific social interactions on the well-being and health of individuals. Since January 2023, Héloïse has been working at Anthropo-Lab (Université Catholique de Lille) with Marie Pelé, Cédric Sueur and Marine Grandgeorge on the ANIMEHPAD project. This project aims to assess the impact of pets on the social network, well-being and health of elderly people in nursing homes.
Maxime Pierron
Maxime Pierron is working on assessing the vulnerability of primate species to environmental changes. He is cosupervised by Dr. Valeria Romano. He worked with Cédric Sueur and Valéria Romano during his master degree on the link between centrality measures and disease dyanmics in a chimpanzee network and then on species distribution model of golden lion tamarin and yellow fever.
Sarah has a master's degree in Political Science and is now enrolled in an interdisciplinary doctoral project that requires taking into account philosophical, ethical, and ethological matters. Her current work focuses on the question of animal suffering: we know non-human animals can feel pain, physiologically, but can they suffer, from a psychological point of view? Her work aims to develop and extend the notion of suffering from a philosophical perspective. Sarah's doctoral project is part of an international joint-supervision agreement between the University of Puebla (México) and the University of Strasbourg (France).
Gwendoline Lemaitre
Gwendoline Lemaitre has a master degree in Anthropology and Ethnology. If we consider pastoral societies as multispecific collectives (human, livestock and animals auxiliaries), it is important to be attentive to the interactions between individuals regardless of their species. Disciplines as ethology, ecology and anthropology interconnect little while the advances in these domains are important and that network analysis provides effective tools for dealing with relevant data for all. Gwendolyne is enrolled in a research doctoral programme based on a fine anthropology of pastoral societies, combining the techniques of ethnographic observation and analysis of the local knowledge of the shepherds, with those of the ethological study of behaviours and interactions.
Theophile Johnson
PhD student at Nanterre, Paris, working on the link between humans and yacks in Nepal. Théophile is supervised by Cédric Sueur on the social network part.
Visiting scholars
Nelson Fabian Galvis Ramirez, 2020
Nelson is a Ph.D. student a the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. His research interests collide between ecology, social behavior and evolution of social structures of Neotropical primates. Nelson´s doctoral project is focused on understanding the dynamics of parasite transmission of several primates species, including Ateles hybridus, Sapajus apella, Cebus versicolor, Alouatta seniculus and Aotus griseimembra. Currently, his research is based on the analyses of behavioral data from a community of free ranging primates, forest productivity, and social network that aims at understanding their contribution to primates´s social structure and their implicacions on parasite transmission.
Tamao Maeda, 2019
Now at WRC, Kyoto
Tamao is interested in the structure and the function of multilevel society, a social system based on the nested level of social organizations. Using a drone technique, she found that feral horse herd had a multi-level structure as well as some of other equine species. She is currently working on applying network analysis to reveal the structure of the horse herd and their intergroup relationships.
Maggie Wisniewska, 2018
Maggie is a Ph.D. student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA. Maggie is interested in how individuals in group-living species integrate complex information about their physical and social landscapes in making movement decisions. In her work, Maggie uses methods from animal behavior, statistical modeling and social network analysis to understand whether African elephants use spatially explicit memories to avoid anthropogenic stressors, and what implications such avoidance may have on the species’ ability to survive in the wild.
Dr. María Fernanda De la Fuente Castellón, 2018
Fernanda is a PhD student from the UniversidadeFederal Rural de Pernambuco, Brazil. She is interested in animal behavior,primatology, and conservation. During her PhD, Fernanda is studying the socialforaging in wild groups of primates (Callithrixjacchus) through a series of field experiments to investigate how differentecological and social factors influence the behavioral strategies, the feedingsuccess, and the social relationships among group members during foraging.Fernanda de la Fuente
Chengfeng WU, 2017
PhD student at Sun Yat-Sen University, China
Studying social behavior of rhesus macaque with social network analysis to answer questions as follows:
- How social behavior was trade as commodity or currency between different individuals in a view of social network;
- How factors such as demographic characteristics and dominance rank influence the social relationships of female macaques;
- The seasonal or annual dynamic of social structure of female rhesus macaques.
Dr. Eugenia Polizzi di Sorrentino, 2013
Italian National Research Council
Comparing Affiliative Relationships of Cebus and Sapajus Species: A Social Networking Approach
McGill University
The intense mining activities on Baffin island and in the Arctic in general locally increase the shipping activities in this area. The main objective of my Ph.D. is to show how these shipping activities are impacting populations of thick-billed murres, an Arctic seabird. To succeed, I will use a large GPS data set associated with accelerometer, temperature and pressure data. Combined all together, these data allow to follow in detail the birds activities and and make a general model which will help better manage the shipping traffic and limit its impact on the local birds populations.
Former members
Benjamin Beltzung
Benjamin has a master degree in Statistics. His current work focuses on drawings made by hominids (children from 2 to 10 years old, naive adults, experts’ adults, great apes) and the learning process linked to it. Several indices exist, both spatial and temporal, to characterize a drawing. These indices are then used to compare different categories as described before. His doctoral project is interdisciplinary, as it requires behavioral biology, comparative psychology, mathematics and informatic. His aim is to develop deep learning algorithms to show differences at several levels: between orangutans, chimpanzees and humans; between humans (at different ages); between naive and experts’ adults.
Dr. Martin Quque
Martin is assistant professor and studied animal physiology, behavioural ecology and their interactions within the ecosystem. The aim of his work is to shed light on the links between longevity and social organisation in ants. For this purpose, three approaches are used: i) proteomics to assess the mechanisms explaining the differences between the social castes; ii) social network analysis to understand the evolutionary role of eusociality and how it interacts with the individual ageing; iii) a comparative study with three species of ants displaying different social organisations, in order to know which are the cellular pathways depending on the phylogeny and which on the social organisation.
Romane Valadoux
Romane worked on the psychological aspects on pedestrian behaviours. She is assessing via questionnaires how culture influences orad risky behaviours and social control reaction.
Mathilde Jay
Mathilde assessed via experiments and observations how pedestrians behave face to nudges expecting to avoid them to cross at the red signal.
Which way individuals interact between them? How a society is structured to face natural selection challenges (group cohesion, hierarchical structure…)? These are part of the questions currently considered by Sosa Orozco Sebastian through multilevel and multi-methodological analyses (social networking and classical referential statistics) to understand the processes of structuring in animal societies, the ecological and evolutional consequences over the structures themselves and the characteristics that emerge from it. The current project aims at answering these numerous questions through a trans-specific study within the clade Macaca.
During her PhD, Lison Martinet worked ondrawing with the aim to better understand its evolutionary origin by testinggreat apes like chimpanzees and its development in humans, especially inchildren. In humans, drawings evolve from scribbles to concrete representation.When we are looking a child’s drawing, it’s often difficult to understand itscontents and to know whether or not the child really wanted to representsomething. Humans are not the only ones to draw because this behavior has alsobeen described in great apes in captivity. To analyze and better understand theevolution of drawing in young children and in primates, who can’t expressthemselves on their productions, it’s necessary to develop new methods of analysis.The purpose of this PhD is to highlight them and get objective mathematicalindices which will permit us to better characterized drawings.
Dr. Alexandre Naud
Alexandre is interested in the interaction between urban environments, human social networks and health. He is currently working on methodological applications of socio-spatial network analysis on human populations in a public health perspective. He investigates how different characteristics of urban environments are associated to healthy aging through social relationships and social activities. His doctoral project is part of an international research program based on partnership between teams of Canada, France and Luxembourg.
Dr. Marie Pelé
Marie is permanent researcher working at the Anthropolab, Université Catholique de Lille. She is also director of the Ethobiosciences, Research and Consultancy Agency in Animal Wellbeing and Behaviour.
Benoit Letang
Now Technician research and formation in breeding management, UMS 28, Sorbonne University
Benoit has an unusual background punctuated by professional experiences in animal care and a return to the university studies. His goal is to use ethology in managing captive population of species in zoological environment. With a particular interest to the primates and their interactions within their social systems so varied, his project focus on the Western Lowland Gorilla hosted in about 80 european zoological institutions. By studying the socialization process, the dynamics of social networks, the development of cognitive abilities, and the influence of temperament of the immature individuals within breeding groups and bachelor groups, its purpose is to define what may be the solution adapted to control the overpopulation of males observed in captivity since about 20 years.
Dr. Isaac Debache
Now at SimilarWeb, TelAviv
Isaac studied economics, social sciences and demography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the European Doctoral School of Demography. He is interested in modelling and simulating social phenomena in order to measure their outcomes on various demographic effects: fertility, health, migration and mortality. He is currently working on a PhD (University of Strasbourg) that aims at analyzing social networks and mobility in relation to their effects on individuals’ health.
Dr. Amandine Ramos
Now at the Association Georges Durand Beautour, La Rochelle, France
She is interested for several years in the organization and the social structure of several animal species, as well as the phenomenon of leadership. Her first works, carried out during her second year of Master, focused on the European bison. She focused particularly on the space use and collective movements in a herd of bison, reintroduced in a reserve in southern France. Her current thesis project aims to study the socio-ecology of the European bison and the North America plains bisons. This comparative study aims to develop management and conservation strategies of bison populations in the context of reintroductions in natural environments.
Now at Institute for Religion, Philosophy and History, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway
Many of the complex phenomena observed in animal societies seem to be emergent properties of simple behavioural rules at the individual level. Using individual-based models, Ivan investigates how and what simple rules may result in complex social behaviour. In his post-doctoral research, he tests two main assumptions proposed by the individual-based model GrooFiWorld for the emergence of complex behaviour in societies of primates. This model suggests that the spatial structure of the group is the main cause of complex social behaviour, and that aggression is the factor shaping this structure. He tests whether the spatial structure in GrooFiWorld is equivalent to that in primates. In addition, he examines the role of affiliation as an alternative mechanism for the formation of a spatial structure and its consequences on the emergence of complex social behaviour.
Dr. Xavier Meyer
Now at the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University with a JSPS fellowship
Xavier is generally interested in animal behaviour, especially how foraging strategies evolve to buffer changes in environment. His current PhD project investigates if behavioural complexity modulation in foraging sequences is pertinent to buffer environmental change, using Adélie penguins (Adélie Land, Antarctica), little penguins (Phillip Island, Australia) and others flying seabirds (Marion Island, South Africa) exposed to various environmental challenges as models.
Now at IPHC, Strasbourg, as permanent CNRS researcher
Understanding diversity in Nature requires insight on the proximate contribution of genetic and ecological factors shaping organism phenotype. His research lies at the crossroads of animal behavioural ecology, ecophysiology, and evolutionary biology. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, and bridging the gap between proximate and ultimate research, He investigates how animals, both birds and mammals, adapt (behaviour and physiology) to a continuously changing environment. I am interested in particular in the evolution of group living, and how social and non-social stimuli may shape physiological and behavioural strategies. He strongly believes that it is through integrative and multidisciplinary knowledge of our living world that we may not only understand and better protect our natural heritage, but also grasp a better understanding of our own nature. This challenge can only be met by a collaborative effort.
Now at the MNHN-CNRS
Julie is generally interested in animal social behaviour and in the evolution of social structures, mainly in non-human primates. Her current postdoctoral project investigates the trade-offs between information and disease transmissions within a social network in the Japanese macaques of Kojima island, in Japan. For her doctoral thesis, she studied the degree of social tolerance, the conflict resolution strategies and the general cooperation patterns of female crested macaques, in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Now at the CRCA, Toulouse
His research interest lies at the interface of individual strategies and group functionality to discover processes shaping group structures and their feedback on individual behaviour. More specifically, he studies interaction networks and behavioural strategies in Drosophila melanogaster, during social learning tasks, to detect which are the most efficient network structures predicting the diffusion of an information. He is also interested at the origin and cause of behavioural adaptations that can influence information transmission in animals. In particular, He is delving into the study of conformism attitudes as the result of evolutionary mechanisms enhancing learning in animal society.
Now at Konstanz University
Christophe Bousquet is an expert in the domain of collective decisions and communication in animal groups. He is working on “Personal information and group decision-making in a fission-fusion society, the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)”. Within his PhD project, he addressed questions on group decision-making in wild groups of meerkats (Suricata suricatta), cooperatively breeding mongooses with high reproductive skew, foraging as cohesive units. He tried to fill the gap between theory and empirical evidence by quantifying naturally occurring transitions of activities and conducting experiments.
Now at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d'Écologie marine et continentale (IMBE)
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Valéria’s project mainly investigates how network properties might interact to mediate pathogen and information transmission in a vast range of primate species (including both captive and wild New World and Old World primates). Her approach is based on a combination of sampling of empirical data, modelling and network analysis, which will allow her to predict and understand the importance of individual and social traits (e.g. individual connectedness, dominance rank) to the chain of transmission through a comparative perspective. Laureate of the 2018 Complex Systems thesis Prize from ISC-PIF
