Dr. Alex Jordan

Our lab uses quantitative approaches to study the evolution of animal social behaviour in natural ecological and social contexts. We translate the computational techniques developed in lab settings for model systems like Drosophila and Zebrafish, including machine vision, automated tracking, and behavioural decomposition, and employ these in more complex field environments like Lake Tanganyika and the Coral Reef. We seek to understand how social and collective interactions are modified by current context, how animals perceive and process social cues, and how environments – both social and physical – are changed as a consequence of animal behaviour. We take a broad approach, combining proximate neurobiological and genetic mechanisms of social behaviour with large-scale ecological studies of social influence and behaviour.