Collective Ecology
Information, biophysical ecosystem dynamics, & behavior interact in fascinating ways to shape organisms' ecology & evolution. We integrate approaches from several fields to understand social & collective behavior through an ecological lens, pursuing answers to questions including (but not limited to):
- When, why, & how do individuals produce & use social information?
- How do animals (non-human & human) individually & collectively make behavioral decisions in a dynamic world?
- How can we as humans collectively sense animal behavior & ecosystem dynamics to understand, steward, & adapt to the changing biophysical systems of which we are all a part?
We explore these ideas across Earth's diverse ecosystems, but with an emphasis on pelagic (i.e., open & deep ocean) ecosystems. These oceanic ecosystems display unique characteristics with regard to scale (enormous in three dimensions), biophysical dynamics (abundant but extremely non-uniform resources aggregate in fluid, ephemeral hotspots), and the range of social information transfer (e.g., vocal pelagic predators transmit social information over 10s-100s of km). Further, they are historically understudied, despite comprising >95% of Earth's biosphere & hosting our planet's largest animal communities.
Our research spans the spectrum from fundamental to applied, and includes projects focused on blue whales, sperm whales, krill, pelagic fishes, humans, and more.
Head of group: Dr. William Oestreich
Research themes
• Collective behavior
• Predator-prey interactions
• Pelagic ecosystems
• Information ecology
• Bioacoustics
• Biological oceanography
• Conservation science