Spring 2022

Talks are Tuesdays at: 08:00 (PDT), 11:00 (EDT), 17:00 (CEST), 20:30 (IST), 01:00 (Wednesday, AEST)

Marlene Zuk

Title: Adaptive signal loss and the role of behavior in the establishment of novel traits. Recorded Talk.

Date: 1 March 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Silent night: adaptive disappearance of a sexual signal in a parasitized population of field crickets.

2. The role of behaviour in the establishment of novel traits.

3. Acoustic experience shapes alternative mating tactics and reproductive investment in male field crickets.

Sarah Guindre-Parker

Title: Ultimate and Proximate benefits of social behavior in superb starlings. Recorded Talk.

Date: 8 March 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Survival benefits of group living in a fluctuating environment.

2. No short-term physiological costs of offspring care in a cooperatively breeding bird.

3. The oxidative costs of parental care in cooperative and pair-breeding African starlings.

Peter Biedermann

Title: Evolutionary feedbacks between insect sociality and microbial management. Recorded Talk.

Date: 15 March 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Pathogen defence is a potential driver of social evolution in ambrosia beetles.

2. Microbiome-assisted carrion preservation aids larval development in a burying beetle.

3. Evolutionary feedbacks between insect sociality and microbial management.

Markus Zöttl

Title: The social life of African mole-rats. Recorded Talk.

Date: 22 March 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) do not specialise in cooperative tasks.

2. Growth affects dispersal success in social mole-rats, but not the duration of philopatry.

3. Differences in cooperative behavior among Damaraland mole rats are consequences of an age-related polyethism.

Karen Kapheim

Title: Causes and consequences of behavioral plasticity in bees. Recorded Talk.

Date: 29 March 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Developmental plasticity shapes social traits and selection in a facultatively eusocial bee.

2. Synthesis of Tinbergen’s four questions and the future of sociogenomics.

3. Kinship, parental manipulation and evolutionary origins of eusociality.

Erica van de Waal

Title: Lab cognition going wild: field experiments on vervet monkeys. Postponed.

Date: 05 April 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Processing of novel food reveals payoff and rank-biased social learning in a wild primate.

2. The pervasive role of social learning in primate lifetime development.

3. Potent social learning and conformity shape a wild primate’s foraging decisions.

Luis Ebensperger

Title: A model of sociality driven by instability, sex conflict, and context-specific benefits. Recorded Talk.

Date: 12 April 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. TBD

2. TBD

3. TBD

Trine Bilde

Title: Social evolution in spiders: short term benefits but long term costs. Recorded Talk.

Date: 19 April 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Cooperative foraging expands dietary niche but does not offer intra-group competition for resources in social spiders.

2. Evolution of sociality in spiders leads to depleted genomic diversity at both population and species levels.

3. Male spiders control offspring sex ratio through greater production of female determining sperm.

Mandy Ridley

Title: Cognition, cooperation and climate change. Recorded Talk.

Date: 26 April 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. The impacts of heat stress on animal cognition: implications for adaptation to a changing climate.

2. Cognitive performance is linked to group size and affects fitness in Australian magpies.

3. Hot droughts compromise interannual survival across all group sizes in a cooperatively breeding bird.

Anthony Di Fiore

Title: Agent-based simulation modeling for studying primate behavior and social evolution. Recorded Talk.

Date: 03 May 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Agent-based modelling as scientific method: A case study analysing primate social behaviour.

2. The promise of spatially explicit agent-based models for primatology research.

3. An introduction to agent‐based models as an accessible surrogate to field‐based research and teaching.

Gloriana Chaverri

Title: Vocal communication and group coordination in disc-winged bats. Recorded Talk.

Date: 10 May 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Social calls used by a leaf-roosting bat to signal location.

2. Contact calling in context: Intra and intergroup variation in vocalization rates depend on a call’s function.

3. The energetics of social signaling during roost location in Spix´s disc-winged bats.

Michael Griesser

Title: Why family living matters for cooperation. Recorded Talk.

Date: 17 May 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Life history and the evolution of family living in birds.

2. Family living sets the stage for cooperative breeding and ecological resilience in birds.

3. Naive Juveniles Are More Likely to Become Breeders after Witnessing Predator Mobbing.

Eva Fischer

Title: Mechanisms of Parental Care in Poison Frogs. Recorded Talk.

Date: 24 May 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Modification of feeding circuits in the evolution of social behavior.

2. The neural basis of tadpole transport in poison frogs.

3. Mechanisms of convergent egg provisioning in poison frogs.

Corina Logan

Title: Do species in human modified environments have to be flexible? Recorded Talk.

Date: 31 May 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Behavioral flexibility is manipulatable and it improves flexibility and problem solving in a new context.

2. Is behavioural flexibility evidence of cognitive complexity? How evolution can inform comparative cognition.

Steve Phelps

Title: TBD

Date: 7 June 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. TBD

2. TBD

3. TBD

Elizabeth Hobson

Title: Dominance hierarchies, fight decisions, & social support as windows into animal social cognition. Recorded Talk.

Date: 14 June 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Differences in social information are critical to understanding aggressive behavior in animal dominance hierarchies.

2. Aggression heuristics underlie animal dominance hierarchies and provide evidence of group-level social information.

3. A guide to choosing and implementing reference models for social network analysis.

Niels Dingemanse

Title: Understanding individual behavior: a key role for social environments. Recorded Talk.

Date: 28 June 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Pathways to social evolution and their evolutionary feedbacks.

2. Indirect genetic effects: a key component of the genetic architecture of behaviour.

3. Life-history evolution under fluctuating density-dependent selection and the adaptive alignment of pace-of-life syndromes.