IB Seminar: Costly information: Social learning in a dangerous world

Integrative Biology seminars are held Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in SSC 2315. Coffee and cookies at 11 a.m. All interested are welcome to attend.

Simon Reader is a full professor in the Department of Biology at McGill studying animal behaviour and cognition, with a focus on individual differences, innovation, and social learning. Much of his work is with Trinidadian guppies, a small freshwater fish that has become a model system for ecology and evolution. His talk will focus on social learning – learning from others – and the question of whether social learning is an adaptive specialization. Dr. Reader will discuss recent field and laboratory studies investigating how cues of predation risk impact brain and behaviour in Trinidadian guppies, a well-studied small tropical freshwater fish. This work suggests social learning propensities are the product of multiple interacting systems, and biases to favor social learning emerge dependent on evolutionary history and current conditions.