The CoCoMo Team

I am a behavioral ecologist with training in comparative psychology and ethology. Broadly, I am interested in social cognition, communication, and decision-making in animal societies. For my PhD, I will be studying how spotted hyenas communicate to obtain relevant information that further shapes their decision-making on group coordination. I am excited to combine acoustic, GPS, and accelerometer data to address questions on the social decision-making process in spotted hyenas.

I am a behavioral ecologist interested in communication in social mammals and its self-regulated coordination. In meerkats, I study the interaction aspect of communication such as the timing of the vocalisation and the social dynamics of vocal exchanges. I also explore breathing as a potential indicator of vocalisation intention and as a possible social cue aiding in regulation of signalling turns. 

• Communication & Collective Movement • Turn-taking • Meerkats  • Hyrax

In my current research I try to understand how an individual’s ability to coordinate with others is affected by experiences early in life and whether these differences ultimately affect individual fitness. I address these questions by studying vocal signals used to coordinate group activity in two study systems, the domestic chicken and the common pheasant. This work is in close collaboration with Dr Joah Madden (University of Exeter) and Prof Andrew Radford (University of Bristol). 

• Communication & Collective Movement  • Group coordination  • Spatial and acoustic data  • Common pheasant  • Domestic chicken

I am a computational biologist and ethologist trying to understand the fundamental decision-making elements that shape behaviour across species. Instant-to-instant, animals decide what to do based on complex, hierarchical decision-making rules and goals, factoring in internal, social, and environmental factors. The grand sum of all these rules can be thought of as a behavioural 'algorithm' by which the animal decides its actions. Although deciphering these algorithms in their entirety is beyond current human ability, my goal is to find fundamental elements and aspects of such decision-making that holds true across species. I use accelerometer data and machine learning methods as well as a range of methods from mathematics and physics to address this problem.