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NEWS
May 2012: the Brazilian Journal of Biology accepted my paper on coati play. More details when I have them.
May 2012: I graduate from the University of Cambridge this month.
May 2012: I started working with Tim Clutton-Brock on a project investigating the socioecological and genetic factors influencing brain size variation in red deer.
November 2011: my paper on bivouac-checking in ant-following birds is in the press at BBC Nature and AnimalWise. Oxford University Press also invited me to blog about the paper, which is now online.
October 2011: my ant-following bird paper came out in issue 22(6) of Behavioral Ecology today and will be in print next week. See the press release.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
The evolution of social behavior, brain size, and cognition
Physical and social environments shape how animals behave and what they know about the world. Investigations of avian behavior and cognition are making ground-breaking discoveries: crows use tools, rooks cooperate to get food, and western scrub-jays plan for the future. The field of behavior in wild animals contains many more treasures awaiting discovery. My own research has shown that coatis (a raccoon relative) play in safer environments, birds that follow army ants could be a new system for investigating memory and future planning (Logan et al. 2011), and corvids (birds in the crow family) support each other after fights (Logan 2010, Logan et al. 2011, Logan et al. submitted). Cognitive discoveries usually occur in laboratories which examine behaviour out of context, leaving many exciting questions about how natural selection has shaped these astonishingly sophisticated behaviours: how do animals use their cognition in the wild? Why did these abilities develop? What socioecological and genetic factors make a large brain? I plan to study cognition in the wild to help answer these questions.
EDUCATION
2012 PhD Experimental Psychology University of Cambridge
Thesis: the sociality, ontogeny, and function of corvid post-conflict affiliation (supervisor: Nicola Clayton, advisor: Patrick Bateson)
Gates Scholar
2004 BS Biology The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA USA
Senior thesis: Play behavior in Nasua narica (white-nosed coati) in Costa Rica (advisor: John T. Longino)
2002 AA degree Skagit Valley College, Mount Vernon, WA USA
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