I am a behavioral ecologist researching the evolution of social behavior. Group-living animals interact heterogeneously with one another and variation in the strength, stability, and tenor of these interactions shapes emergent group-level attributes. These group-level attributes in turn have strong consequences for individual fitness and behavioral optima. I interpret animal social behavior through the lens of this dynamic interplay between “bottom-up” effects of individual heterogeneity on group-level patterns and “top-down” effects of group-level phenomena on individual experiences, sometimes termed individual-to-society feedbacks. Specifically, I investigate how patterns of collective decision-making, competitive regimes, and movement arise from social processes and impact fitness in wild animals. To do so, I combine information afforded by long-term monitoring of individually recognized animals with high resolution data gained from animal-mounted bio-loggers and automated image-based tracking technology. My current and past study systems include baboons, white-nosed coatis, meerkats, spotted hyenas, and chimpanzees.

Publications
Winans, JC, Learn, NH, Siodi, IL, Warutere, JK, Archie, EA, Tung, J, Alberts, SC, Markham, AC. (submitted). High early lactational synchrony within baboon groups predicts increased infant mortality. bioRxiv.

Wellens, KR, Lee, SM, Winans, JC, Pusey, AE,  Murray, CM (2022). Female chimpanzee associations with male kin: Trade-offs between inbreeding avoidance and infanticide protection. Animal Behaviour 190: 115-123.
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Funding Sources: Stony Brook University, National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Animal Behavior Society, American Philosophical Society, American Society of Primatologists