Abstract:
If we look at animals around us, we find that they live in different kinds of societies. Can we explain the diverse lives of social animals? Socioecological theory offers a framework to do so. In this talk, we explore the reasons for sociality and consider how ecological circumstances can influence the evolution of different social organisations and structures.
About the Speaker:
T.N.C. Vidya graduated with her PhD, in 2005, on the population genetic structure and phylogeography of the Asian elephant at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, and partly at Columbia University, New York. She was a post-doctoral researcher at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, before joining the Evolutionary and Organismal Biology Unit of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru, in 2008. She is a Professor at JNCASR and is primarily interested in animal behaviour, socioecology, and evolution. Her lab group set up the Kabini Elephant Project, focusing on the long-term monitoring of the behaviour and ecology of individually-identified Asian elephants.