Dr. Jack Winans

I am a behavioral ecologist researching the evolution of social behavior. Group-living animals interact heterogeneously with one another and variation in the tenor, stability, and strength of these interactions shapes emergent group-level attributes. These group-level attributes in turn have strong consequences for individual fitness and behavioral optima. I interpret animal social behavior through the lens of this dynamic interplay between “bottom-up” effects of individual heterogeneity on group-level patterns and “top-down” effects of group-level phenomena on individual experiences, sometimes termed individual-to-society feedbacks. Specifically, I investigate how patterns of collective decision making, competitive regimes, and movement arise from social processes and impact fitness in wild animals. To do so, I combine information afforded by long-term monitoring of individually recognized animals with high resolution data gained from animal-mounted bio-loggers and automated image-based tracking technology. My current and past study systems include baboons, meerkats, white-nosed coatis, spotted hyenas, and chimpanzees.