Author: Gerry Carter

I study the behavioral, sensory, and social ecology of vampire bats. http://socialbat.org.

New paper: Modeling the evolution and formation of animal friendship

What is friendship? I have always considered friendship to be a long-term and relatively low-stakes cooperative relationship. The traits that allow people to form friendships can be understood through several theories developed to understand the biological evolution of other cooperative traits; these theories include social evolution theory, game theory, and biological market theory. However many … Continue reading New paper: Modeling the evolution and formation of animal friendship

An early career award for contributions to animal cognition

The American Psychological Association (APA) awarded me with a 2024 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the category of animal learning and behavior. Since 1974, this award has recognized “excellent psychologists who are at early stages of their research careers.” Due to a tie in the selection process, I share the award with Christopher Krupenye at Johns Hopkins University. I'm not … Continue reading An early career award for contributions to animal cognition

New paper: Can light-induced synchronized arousals help bats survive white-nose syndrome?

Almost 20 years ago, a cold-loving fungus was transmitted from caves in Europe to upstate New York, unleashing one of the worst wildlife disease outbreaks ever recorded. White-nose syndrome is named after the white fungus growing on the faces of hibernating bats (image below). As the fungus spread across North America, hibernating bats died by … Continue reading New paper: Can light-induced synchronized arousals help bats survive white-nose syndrome?

New paper: “reciprocity versus pseudo-reciprocity” is a false dichotomy

Nature vs nurture. Introverts vs extraverts. Good vs evil. All of these false dichotomies describe cases where a continuous variable that could be imagined as a normal bell curve is instead conceptually divided into two "clean" categories, despite the fact that both factors are almost always present together. This simplification is particularly a problem when … Continue reading New paper: “reciprocity versus pseudo-reciprocity” is a false dichotomy

Carter Lab wins two awards from North American Society for Bat Research

The Carter Lab (left) attended the conference for the North American Society for Bat Research, and we won two awards from the society. Julia Vrtilek entered the student competition and received the Titley Scientific Award for student talk "on any aspect of the biology of bats" for her presentation "Vocal convergence in the contact calls … Continue reading Carter Lab wins two awards from North American Society for Bat Research

Lab updates: October 2023

I was included on two massive collaborative papers (with almost 200 "co-authors") published in Nature Ageing and Science. The first paper is about the further development of epigenetic clocks that work across mammals; these clocks are built from DNA methylation sites that are near genes linked to cancer, obesity, and lifespan; and humans that have … Continue reading Lab updates: October 2023

Field notes: scouting a new site for our lab in Costa Rica

Last month, postdoc May Dixon, former postdoc Basti Stockmaier (now faculty at University of Tennessee Knoxville), and his partner Claire Hemingway (also now faculty at UT Knoxville) went to Costa Rica to scout a new field site for tracking contact networks between vampire bats and cattle. Below is a summary of a trip report by … Continue reading Field notes: scouting a new site for our lab in Costa Rica

Gerry Carter becomes an HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the largest private biomedical research institution in the nation, named me and 30 other biologists as Freeman Hrabowski Scholars, selected as "outstanding early career faculty in science who have potential to become leaders in their research fields and to create diverse and inclusive lab environments in which everyone can … Continue reading Gerry Carter becomes an HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar

Updates: April 2023

Julia Vrtilek passed her PhD Candidacy Exam is now a PhD Candidate! Julia is studying the possibility of vocal convergence in the contact calls of vampire bats. Raven Hartman successfully defended her MSc Thesis! Her thesis is entitled "Hierarchically embedded social dynamics in vampire bats" and it explores how different scales of movement (roost switching, … Continue reading Updates: April 2023