About
We aim to understand the evolution and regulation of cooperative relationships. I use grooming and food sharing to gain insights into the social lives of vampire bats. My lab starts Fall 2018 at The Ohio State University.
Browse Topics
- About cooperation (52)
- About science as an activity (11)
- About vampire bats (48)
- News (51)
- Other topics (19)
- People (5)
- Uncategorized (2)
Follow me on Twitter
My TweetsTop Posts & Pages
- Do you hear what I hear? Hearing sensitivity of the common vampire bat
- Some advice for grad students
- Goals of science vs Goals of scientists (& a love letter to PLOS One)
- Team Vampire, Spring 2017
- The use of the terms "reciprocity" and "reciprocal altruism" in biology
- An essay about caves and the origins of echolocation
Category Archives: News
Update: three golden opportunities
Now – October 2017, the Smithsonian Institute has awarded me with a fellowship to finish collecting data from lab and field experiments on vampire bat social behavior with Rachel Page at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. November 2017 – August 2018, … Continue reading
Posted in News
6 Comments
‘Team Vampire’ Fall 2016
Julia Vrtilek (Biology, Amherst College, 2015) is studying the development of grooming and food-sharing networks in young-of-the-year vampire bats. What are your interests? I find it fascinating and awe-inspiring that “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most … Continue reading
Posted in News, People
Leave a comment
Summer 2016 updates
Our two undergraduate interns Yeli Garcia (Earlham) and Emily Dong (Cornell) just completed their independent projects and finished their seasons in Panama. Yeli’s project was entitled “Guano scent as a cue for roost-finding in vampire bats” and Emily’s was “Co-feeding … Continue reading
Posted in News, People
2 Comments
Recent media article about vampire bats and friendship
Sapiens Magazine just put out an article about vampire bats and friendship. The author Leah Shaffer did a great job, probably the most accurate media story on the vampire bats I can remember. Usually, journalists get a lot wrong, but … Continue reading
Posted in About vampire bats, News
Leave a comment
Summer interns for the vampire bat project
Every season, two interns will be assisting the vampire bat food-sharing project at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama. These are our two STRI-funded interns for Summer 2016. Emily Dong is a major in the Biology and Society, and … Continue reading
Posted in News
Leave a comment
New paper on vampire bat communication
Our newest paper is Common vampire bat contact calls attract past food-sharing partners in the journal Animal Behaviour. You can download the paper for free until June 12, 2016 here at this link: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1SwLKmjLdkSa It’s a simple playback experiment where we disentangled … Continue reading
Posted in About vampire bats, News
Leave a comment
Non-maternal allogrooming of pups
We have four new vampire bats. The bats here at the field station have been breeding in captivity, which is a good sign that they are doing well, and it ensures we have some highly related dyads for our experiments. My … Continue reading
Posted in About cooperation, About vampire bats, News
1 Comment
