Updates

Jan 14, Bambi Seminar, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Barro Colorado Island, Panama -- "The Reciprocity Controversy" Jan 19, talk at University of Washington, Psychology Department -- "Why do vampire bats share food?" Jan 20, talk at University of Washington, Psych Dept, Animal Behavior Group -- "Reciprocity with and without social bonding" Feb 8-9, I'll be at … Continue reading Updates

Is the ingroup-outgroup bias just two points on a social distance spectrum?

Looking into the human literature on the evolution of cooperation, I feel that studies on humans are often conducted and interpreted poorly compared to studies of cooperation in ants, bacteria, fish, and other nonhuman primates. One point of confusion involves wrong assumptions about what individual humans should maximize and how well they should do it. But another … Continue reading Is the ingroup-outgroup bias just two points on a social distance spectrum?

New review of bat cooperation

Most of the 1,300 species of bats live in groups. Indeed, some are quite social, with relationships that last for years. For the latest issue on the evolution of direct benefits cooperation in Philosophical Transactions B, Jerry Wilkinson was asked to write a review on cooperation in bats and he co-wrote the article (PDF) with Kisi Bohn, and Danielle … Continue reading New review of bat cooperation

How we define “reciprocity”: the good, the broad, and the ugly

I hope this is the last blogpost I ever write about semantics. I always want to point people to a good reference on what the words that I use mean (and there isn't a short quick guide), and Wikipedia does not work here. People use the terms "reciprocal altruism" and "reciprocity"in very different ways in … Continue reading How we define “reciprocity”: the good, the broad, and the ugly

VampCam featured at Smithsonian and some recent papers

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, … Continue reading VampCam featured at Smithsonian and some recent papers

Social benefits of non-kin food sharing by female vampire bats

My new paper just came out in Proceedings B. For now, it's freely available to download at the journal website here. The paper describes an experiment that 'failed' in one sense but yielded another very neat finding nonetheless. The main goals was to detect for contingent reciprocity between close relatives. I kept several pairs of mothers … Continue reading Social benefits of non-kin food sharing by female vampire bats

New paper on giving intranasal oxytocin to vampire bats

Intranasal oxytocin increases social grooming and food sharing in the common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus I gave two groups of highly familiar captive vampire bats intranasal oxytocin. In the first group intranasal oxytocin led to larger regurgitated food donations. In the second group, I gave a larger dose and found that oxytocin also increased allogrooming between adult … Continue reading New paper on giving intranasal oxytocin to vampire bats