Research Interests


Under construction: please see our homepage and personal pages.

[Reader Lab Wordle]

The wordle above gives an idea of the lab’s research interests – it's based on the abstracts of our publications. By happy accident it vaguely resembles our main study species, the guppy.

 

We study the mechanisms, development, and evolution of animal behaviour, with a focus on social cognition. In particular, our laboratory studies how diverse patterns of environmental variability shape reliance on different information sources, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying social learning, and the evolutionary consequences of behavioural flexibility.

We principally work with fish, but have experience with rodent, avian, insect, primate and human study systems, in both the field (Quebec, Caribbean, Europe) and laboratory.

Keywords: Social learning; behavioural flexibility; behavioural innovation; cognitive evolution; comparative analysis; cultural evolution; individual differences; phenotypic plasticity.

Some of our current collaborations:
Nadia Aubin-Horth, Département de Biologie, Université Laval, Canada
Ryan Earley, Biological Sciences, U. Alabama, USA
Andrew Hendry, Redpath & Biology, McGill, Canada
Rüdiger Krahe, Biology, McGill, Canada
Kevin Laland, Biology, St Andrews, UK
Rachel Page, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama
Denis Réale,  Biological Sciences, UQAM, Canada
Mike Webster, Biology, St Andrews, UK