The VampCam is being featured on the STRI website frontpage. There’s an inaccuracy though– it gives the wrong name of the authors on the study they discuss. I did that social grooming study in collaboration with the Organization for Bat Conservation and co-author Lauren Leffer, an undergraduate at the University of Maryland.
I’ve been in Gamboa, Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) for a few months now and I love it here! One of the best aspects is simply being around so many brilliant biologists who work here and are also coming and going throughout the year. Here’s a neat video about STRI:
There has been a lot of neat studies on cooperation and reciprocity recently. Here are some recent and relevant ones.
From the Taborksy Lab…
- polygyny affects paternal care in cooperatively breeding cichlids
- also using cichlids– reproductive output of social groups may be affected in opposite directions by different social factors
- and this review paper on proximate mechanisms of cooperation
There’s a special issue of Philosophical Transactions B on “Solving the puzzle of collective action through inter-individual differences: evidence from primates and humans”
Also, just a few more:
- the return of predator inspection reciprocity in fish
- kinship and predator inspection in a cichlid fish
- reciprocal grooming and sharing in Barn Owl nestlings
- a new experimental design to test reciprocity in primates
- tolerance and reward equity predict cooperation in ravens
- a reciprocity review paper
- individual variation in response to isolation in ravens
- social experiences during development and the brains of voles
- mating bonds influence foraging strategy in songbirds
Carter Lab 