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©Peter Kaut
I am interested in how behaviour shapes the life of animals. My research is focused on how behaviour develops and evolves over time, and how behaviour is affected by various factors, such as social environment, physiology, climate and habitat.
I received my PhD from Stockholm University, Sweden, working with wolves and dogs to answer questions about how behaviour has evolved during domestication. My PhD work also inspired me to take a closer look at the domestication syndrome hypothesis and how it applies to modern day dog breeds. I did my postdoc work at Lund University where I focused on questions relating to social evolution and cooperation in birds.
I am now an Assistant Professor in Animal Behaviour at Linköping University, Sweden. Having just received a 4-year Early Career Grant from FORMAS, my main research focus for the foreseeable future will be on behavioural ontogeny using dogs as a model species.
christina.hansen.wheat (at) liu.se
NEWS!
December 2024: The review paper Clive Wynne and I wrote highlighting the unfulfilled potential of dogs in studying behavioural ecology and evolution is out in Animal Behaviour. Find it here.
November 2024: I have been awarded a 4-year Early Career Grant from FORMAS to study the behavioural ontogeny using dogs as a model species. Very excited to start this project in the beginning of 2025!
September 2023: Researchers do not always agree. We respond to Gácsi et al's critique of our study from 2022 in Ecology and Evolution where we demonstrate that wolves show attachment to human care-givers. Find the rebuttal here.
October 2022: Our commentary on point-following in wolves and dogs and their willingness to approach a stranger is out in Learning & Behavior. Great collaboration with Clive Wynne and Wouter van der Bijl. Find the paper here.
September 2022: Another study from the Dog Wolf Project is now published, this time in Ecology and Evolution. It is on attachment behaviour in wolves and dogs and builds off the brilliant master thesis of Linn Larsson. Find it here.
July 2022: Our critique of the Swedish Parliament's proposal to cull half of the Swedish wolf population is now published in Science. Great international collaboration. Find it here.
November 2020: I have been awarded a International 3-year Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Swedish research council to study the various fitness consequences of social behaviour in birds.
April 2020: Our follow-up paper exploring the domestication syndrome in dogs "Morphology does not covary with predicted behavioral correlations of the domestication syndrome in dogs" is now published in Evolution Letters. Super fun collaboration with Wouter van der Bijl and Christopher W. Wheat. Find it here
January 2020: "Intrinsic Ball Retrieving in Wolf Puppies Suggests Standing Ancestral Variation for Human-Directed Play Behavior" is now published in iScience. Find it here
September 2019: "Dogs, but Not Wolves, Lose Their Sensitivity Toward Novelty With Age" is the first paper from the pratical part of my PhD where we hand-raised dogs and wolves for behavioural comparisons. It is now published in Frontiers in Psychology. Find it here
June 2019: "Behavioural correlations of the domestication syndrome are decoupled in modern dog breeds" is now published in Nature Communications. Find it here
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