An extensive form game (source Wikimedia Commons).
Our research is focused on the nature of social foraging, which is defined loosely as the study of decisions that animals make when their foraging behaviour depends not only on their own strategy, but on the strategies of other animals as well. This distinguishes it from solitary foraging, which can be studied using straightforward optimization techniques. To study social foraging, we must study the frequency-dependent nature of foraging behaviour in social situations. This is and has been done largely with mathematical tools such as game theory.
During my Ph.D, I will be investigating whether we can use other representations of social foraging behaviour, such as those offered by graph theory and social network analysis, to explore these foraging situations and create new models of them.
(source Ian Riley via Wikimedia Commons)
Personally, my overall research interests can be roughly divided into three overlapping categories:
1. Evolutionary influences on behaviour, in both the human and non-human animal. Though my eventual goal lies in the study of human behaviour, I believe that to properly apply evolutionary principles to human behaviour it is best to begin with the fields of research that have spent the most time on the evolution of behaviour, such as behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology in general. Specific questions that I have pursued or am currently pursuing in this area include:
- How can we best model aggressive communication in animals?
- How might teenage pregnancy in humans be influenced by the childhood experience of parenting? (The "early and fast" hypothesis of human reproductive choice in females)
2. Mathematical modeling of behaviour. This has so far been primarily through game theory, but I am also interested in techniques such as artificial neural networks and stochastic dynamic programming. Specific questions that I have pursued or am currently pursuing in this area include:
- How can we use genetic algorithms to find solutions to game theory models of communication (for example, models of aggressive communication) that are difficult or impossible to solve analytically?
- Can we employ graph theory to predict the population dynamics of a game theory model?
3. Statistical techniques and research methodology. In particular, I'm interested in nonparametric statistics (boostrapping and randomization), causal modeling with structural equation modeling, and the analysis of time series data (such as the teenage pregnancy data, above).