0901056: Loren D. Hayes, The University of Louisiana at Monroe 0901045: Daniel T. Blumstein, UCLA
This U.S.-Chile collaborative award will support a workshop on intraspecific variation and social systems. The event will be held in August 2009 at the Universidad Católica de Chile. The workshop will be organized by Dr. Loren Hayes of the University of Louisiana at Monroe, Dr. Daniel Blumstein of UCLA, and Dr. Rodrigo Vasquez and Dr. Luis Ebensperger from the Universidad Católica de Chile. The meeting will serve as a forum for researchers to discuss new ways of thinking about mechanisms that lead to instraspecific variation in animal social systems. The workshop will foster communication between an interdisciplinary group of experts in the fields of behavioral ecology, endocrinology, genetics, and neurobiology. Particular emphasis will be placed on the participation of graduate students and junior researchers.
A key objective of the workshop is to plan the development of a mechanistically-sound model of social variation, with an aim to predict the effect of intraspecific habitat variation on the expression of social group living and mating systems. Specifically this workshop will expand the scope of existing ecological models for social group formation and maintenance.
