General

We are interested in understanding how individuals learn to deal with the challenges they are faced with in their environment.

​We have a particular interest in the effects that early-life experience has on the development of behaviour (including social behaviour and cognition), and how this early-life experience influences how individuals adjust to their environment.

Adult golden lion tamarin from one of the habituated groups at the Poco das Antas Research Station, Brazil

Feral pigeon in the lab

Cognitive ecology in a changing world

Anthropogenic environments confer many challenges to species inhabiting this environment, but also many new opportunities. Cognitive abilities (i.e., “the mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store, and act on information from the environment”; Shettleworth, 1999) can allow animals to adapt to anthropocised environments and environmental changes. In the lab we are investigating how specific aspects of the environment – particularly when experienced during early-life – impact individual’s cognition and their fitness. The goal is to understand how the specific challenges and opportunities that individuals face in their environment shapes the decisions that they make, and what consequences these decisions have.
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The role of social information in shaping decision-making

While learning about their environments, individuals can use others as source of information. Social learning may allow individuals to track environmental change while minimising the costs associated with learning in a non-social context. In the lab, we’re interested in the relative role of social vs individual learning to better understand how individuals make decisions.
The social environment is key in producing information available to conspecifics. As such, we’re also investigating the role that this social environment plays in shaping decision-making.

Lesser black-backed gull feeding chicks

Great tit prior to release (all captures conducted with permits)

Overall, we are incorporating a range of theoretical frameworks and experimental techniques from psychology, animal behaviour, movement ecology and microbial sciences to answer our questions.

​Current projects involve examining the role of diet and the gut-microbiome in decision-making of feral pigeons (funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Fellowship), antipredator behaviour in tits, and learning of microhabitat use in wild gulls (in collaboration with Bretagne Vivante).