My Research Projects

Summary: My research focuses on the mechanisms underlying behavioural plasticity in free-ranging social animals. What do animals learn from each other, and who do they learn from? When does social learning lead to the estiablishment of culture? Are cognitive traits related to individuals' personality and stress physiology? What are the fitness consequences of behavioural variation? 

Learn more about my past and current projects below and check out my list of publications. 

Since 2023, I co-lead the  long-term behavioral ecology project on California ground squirrels at Briones Regional Park in California, established by Prof Jennifer Smith (University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire) in 2013. Together with a team of primarily undergraduate student research assistants, we monitor hundreds of squirrels, collecting demographic, spatial, behavioral and physiological data each summer. 

My current research is concerned with behavioral plasticity in human-altered environments. As a Swiss National Science Foundation postdoc mobility fellow at UC Davis (since 2022), I investigate how human presence affects social network structure and learning strategies in the California ground squirrels. I combine behavioral observations and experiments using automated puzzle boxes with remote tracking to better understand how fine-scale variation in human presence shapes individual squirrels' behavior.  

During my postdoc at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour (2019-2022), we have investigated the ontogeny of social networks and learning strategies in wild great tit (Parus major) fledglings using fully automated cognitive foraging puzzles (find out more about the puzzle boxes here). What factors underlie the formation of social networks, and how do these changes over time (publication here)? Which aspects of behaviour do fledglings learn from their parents, other adults or peers? And how important is social versus personal information?
I have further looked at how changes in the social environment can trigger changes in individual behaviour and how this translates to population-level effects. Manuscripts are underway, so watch this space!

For my PhD thesis at the University of Leeds (2016-2019), I have investigated the spread of two foraging behaviours involving tool-use ('sponging' and 'shelling') in a population of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in the Western Gulf of Shark Bay in Western Australia, as part of the Shark Bay Dolphin Research. Using social network analysis, we have shown that the use of marine sponges is vertically socially transmitted between mother and primarily female offspring (link to publication here). Meanwhile, we found that 'shelling', which involves the use of giant gastropod shells to catch fish, spreads horizontally among associates (link to publication here). Furthermore, we have investigated the impacts of a devastating marine heatwave in 2011 on the population's demography, demonstrating long-lasting declines in both survival as well as female reproductive rates (link to publication here). After spending 7 field seasons collecting data off the township of 'Useless Loop' between 2013 and 2019, I continue to support the Shark Bay Dolphin Research as an External Collaborator.