Jack Thorley

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My work in SEGUL is aimed at understanding the causes and consequences of individual variation in foraging behaviour in an ocean sentinel species, the wandering albatross. This work will use high resolution bio-logging data to link variation in foraging behaviour to individual differences in personality and life history. With this information I hope to test classical theories related to plasticity and pace-of-life. I am also working with collaborators to build eco-evolutionary models that embed wandering albatross personality into a demographic framework.

 

Before joining the group I worked mostly with cooperatively breeding mammals in the Kalahari Desert (Damaraland mole-rats and meerkats), using experimental and data-driven approaches to investigate how the structure of cooperative societies, with their large group sizes, high within-group relatedness and marked reproductive skew, shapes the behavioural decisions of individuals and modifies their growth and ageing trajectories.