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I am broadly interested in questions pertaining to the evolution and maintenance of social behaviors.  I am especially interested in the evolutionary mechanisms that maintain cooperative behaviors that benefit the entire group.  

To understand the maintenance of cooperative behaviors, I study sociable weavers (Philetairus socius; figure 1) in Namibia.  These birds build communal, perennial nests that they roost in each night.  The nest (figure 2) benefits all the individuals in a colony by providing warmer temperatures at night than the ambient temperature.  



Although there is a measureable benefit to the nest, individuals should still forego nest building if the other weavers will perform the nest building behavior for them.  I am using a series of behavioral observations and experimental manipulations to test certain mechanisms that may allow the sociable weavers to maintain the communal nest.  

2010 - present

2010 - present

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My Research

Figure 1: Three sociable weaversll a story and let your users know a little more about you.​

Figure 2: Multiple sociable weaver nests

I am also building an agent-based model to simulate selection on nest-building behavior in sociable weavers (figure 3 is a snapshot of the model with visualization).  The model will allow me to enter migration rates as well as alter relevant ecological variables that may affect cooperative nest construction.  Combined with my model, my behavioral observations will allow me to delimit the mechanisms that likely stabilize cooperative nest construction.

Figure 3: An image from the agent based model.

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