Max Planck supports collective behavior research cooperation with Uruguay
Lucia Mentesana and Nico Adreani have won funding for Max Planck Tandem and Partner Groups in Uruguay in collaboration with the Department of Collective Behavior at MPI-AB
Two researchers from Uruguay’s Universidad de la República have teamed up with the Department of Collective Behavior on an international collaboration to develop a mechanistic understanding of animal cooperation.
The team has secured funding from the Max Planck Society, Germany, and the National Agency for Research and Innovation (ANII), Uruguay, to establish a research partnership that will bring expertise from both countries to bear on understanding the collective behavior underlying complex animal architecture.
Lucia Mentesana and Nico Adreani—both of whom earned their biology degrees at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina)—will jointly lead a Max Planck Tandem Research Group at Universidad de la República where they collaborate on a joint research initiative (The Ornithology Lab). The Tandem Research Group builds on existing partnerships between Mentesana, Adreani, and researchers at MPI-AB’s Department of Collective Behavior and the former Max Planck Institute for Ornithology.
Under the five-year funding agreement, scientists and students from both institutions will collaborate on interdisciplinary research that combines AI-driven animal tracking and behavioral data analysis with field-based ecology. The topic—Collective nest building: cooperation mechanisms and reproductive consequences in ovenbirds—explores the fundamental question of how animals cooperate to build complex architectural structures.
“Our partnership will unite efforts of researchers in Europe and Latin America to deepen understanding of animal collective behavior and build capacity among early career researchers,” says Dr. Lucia Mentesana, who is an Associate Professor at Universidad de la República.
“By combining Max Planck’s focus on quantitative experimental tools for animal behavior with our Uruguayan partners’ deep knowledge on the behavioral ecology of a collective nest building bird, we are building a trans-continental bridge to fundamental insights into animal collective behavior,” says Prof. Iain Couzin, director of the Department of Collective Behavior at MPI-AB and a professor at the University of Konstanz.
In addition, Mentesana and Adreani have been awarded a Max Planck Partner Group under the same collective nest building project. With five years of additional funding from the Max Planck Society, the pair will co-lead the Partner Group in Universidad de la República. The added support will foster deeper, lasting ties with Couzin’s department and the University of Konstanz where they both completed their PhDs.
“I’m excited to be strengthening the building blocks of automated behavioral tracking and analysis that I used in preceding projects in Konstanz, and to apply them to this model of nest-building in horneros, an emblematic species in our home country and throughout South America,” says Dr. Adreani who holds an Adjunct Professor position at Universidad de la República.
Mentesana and Adreani’s project studies how pairs of Rufous hornero birds cooperate to build their mud nests. Using cameras, AI tracking, and field experiments, the researchers will investigate how the birds coordinate their actions and whether better teamwork leads to greater breeding success.
The project will leverage a 3D posture-tracking system developed in Couzin’s Department of Collective Behavior. This AI-driven software processes video to generate high-resolution 3D data on bird behavior and the nest’s architectural progress.
“By understanding how two birds cooperate to build a nest, we can learn general rules about how animals coordinate and build complex structures together, which could even be insightful for the development of robotics for construction” says Adreani. These insights could help explain cooperation in many animal species and improve scientific tools for studying animal behavior in the wild.
Max Planck Tandem Research Group
A Max Planck Tandem Research Group is an international collaboration, primarily based in Latin America, where a local research group works in close partnership with a Max Planck Institute (MPI) in Germany to foster high-quality, independent research. These groups support early-career researchers (Group Leaders) who have returned from a postdoc stay at a MPI to their home country, with funding typically shared between local institutions (e.g., ANII) and the Max Planck Society.
Max Planck Partner Group
A Max Planck Partner Group is a collaborative research unit established by the Max Planck Society to foster long-term cooperation between a Max Planck Institute (MPI) and a foreign research institution. Led by early-career researchers returning to their home country, these groups (80+ worldwide) run for 3–5 years to maintain scientific ties through joint projects.
