Social contexts and behavioural decisions in animals

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Within populations, individual animals (including humans) differ to varying degrees in their behaviour and reproductive success. Despite recent advances, much work remains to elucidate the mechanisms generating and maintaining such variation, and the consequences of the latter for the processes of selection and evolution. Towards meeting this challenge, the current proposed research aims in the short term to ascertain the extent to which social contexts (social factors) and socially-acquired information influence the behavioural decisions of individuals that live in social groups. More specifically, I propose to investigate the potential influences of certain important social factors on: (i) the tendency of females to copy the observed mate choice of other females (i.e. mate-choice copying behaviour) and thereby on the intensity of sexual selection, (ii) male mating tactics, and (iii) the formation and maintenance of particular social associations among individuals and the implications of such associations for social networks in natural populations.