Environmental Structuring Of Individual Action In Social Mammals

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My research has been - and is - concerned with the ways in which the physical, ecological and social environments interact to present individuals with challenges that are contingent on particular contexts. It is my view that the contingent nature of the challenges provides the basal level of the cognition of human and non-human primates. Such cognition is best characterised by the ability to act adaptively in real-time (online cognition), rather than engage in thought about the best ways to proceed. To the extent to which it is a 'social' cognition, I am interested in the ways in which being an obligate member of a social group structures an individual's responses to the world. I conduct my research on non-human primates (baboon, vervet monkeys) in the wild in order to document the nature of the challenges as well as the variability, and context-specificity, of the responses of different individuals. I am currently concentrating on the pressures imposed on social animals, who must coordinate their activities, by the thermal environment. The rapidity of climate change gives this aspect of my research a particular salience and is leading to applied work in the modeling of the effects of this change for social animals in arid areas. I am also working more generally on the use of space and the ways in which being a member of a social group both affords opportunities for action as well as limits what can be done.