Profile: From behavioural observations, to genes, to evolution

TL;DRAbstract

My interest in social behaviour probably stems from me belonging to a species where social interactions rule our lives. As a teenager I was very interested in psychiatry, and I also recall spending hours observing the human-like attitudes of chimpanzees and gorillas in the zoo. Accordingly, while studying biology at university, I seriously considered the option of studying chimpanzees. But at the time of graduating I had come to realise that this was not an easy task. Either one would conduct studies in the field with the only hope to collect sparse observational data, or one could study chimpanzees in enclosures, but the very contrived and artificial environment makes it difficult to understand how behaviour might have been modulated by natural selection. I therefore started to think about other social organisms that could be easily observed and, importantly, where it was possible to experimentally manipulate key components of social organisation. This paved the way for my interest in

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