People

My research aims to understand patterns of behaviour and life history in social animals, particularly animals that exhibit cooperative behaviour, such as the banded mongoose. Building on some pioneering research in the 70s and early 90s, I started the current phase of the Banded Mongoose Research Project in 1995 for my PhD research, with the help of Francis Mwanguhya who is now the Field Manager. The project has grown in size and complexity over the years, not least because banded mongooses have turned out to be ideal for testing theories about cooperation and conflict, early life influences on health and behaviour, and how the features of a society shape an animal’s life history. They are also unusual in many respects – males live longer than females, females synchronise birth to the same day, and males form one-to-one relationships with pups that are not their own, to name just three. Our research on how and why these patterns occur has contributed to a better understanding of the lives and behaviour of animals that live in families and groups.

I am the Banded Mongoose Research Project Field Manager and have been working with the mongooses together with Mike since 1996. I am responsible for the day to day management and organisation of the field work. I have enjoyed seeing the project grow and develop over the years, and still enjoy seeing the mongooses every day. I particularly enjoy seeing new packs form in our population as I like the challenge of habituating wild individuals and comparing the behaviour of new packs with established ones. For this reason, I have a soft spot for Pack 19, a new pack on the peninsula, and am keen to get to know them as they become more habituated. I like reading novels and my favourite book is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I am also a keen sportsman and Manchester United fan. I have a wife, Edna, and four children: Sylvia, Evelyn, Shivan and Kelvin.

I’m a Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of York. My interests centre on causal inference, animal sociality, animal life history. I’m fascinated by animal societies because they offer profound insights into the evolution of cooperation, communication, and social complexity. Studying how animals organize, interact, and solve problems helps us understand not only their worlds but also fundamental principles that shape all social life. I'm interested in causal inference because the most important thing to me in science is getting it right! In my spare time, I like to write and record songs, hit the gym, and spend time with my son.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology Department at Brown University in Providence, RI, USA. My research aims to understand how animals gather and use information. I joined the Banded Mongoose Research Project because I was interested in understanding how animal groups—comprised of individuals with diverse abilities and motivations—come together during contests to make collective decisions. While I still work with the BMRP, in my current position I am re-establishing a focus on my PhD system of fighting mantis shrimp-- crustaceans that fight by exchanging bullet-like blows on each other's armored tailplates. I hope to use "extreme" examples—from warring mongooses to high-force shrimp strikes—to gain novel insights into how animals navigate their daily lives. Outside of science, I love being a father to my son (with a second arriving soon!) and exploring the Northeast of the US!

My research tackles important and timely questions at the interface of evolutionary, ecological and conservation genetics. I am particularly interested in the factors that shape genetic diversity over space and time, as well as in the impacts of genetic variation on individual fitness and population viability. My research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, combining genetics and genomics approaches with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, stable isotope analysis, endocrinological and immunological profiling, movement analysis, in situ mesocosms, reciprocal transplant experiments and thermal challenge experiments.

I’m a Professor of Evolution and Animal Behaviour in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge. My research involves the use of game theory and evolutionary simulation modelling to predict how animals behave under different social and ecological conditions. I am particularly interested in social evolution and the evolution of patterns of cooperation and conflict. Some of my theoretical work is inspired by the banded mongoose system, including my work on the evolution of intergroup conflict, the formation and maintenance of group identity and the cognitive mechanisms underpinning complex cooperation.

I am an Associate Professor in Zoology at Swansea University. My research uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate how animal societies evolve, combining observational data with genetic, ecological and biochemical data. In particular, my work has focused on four interconnecting themes 1) exploring the evolution of cooperation 2) understanding the importance of inbreeding and inbreeding avoidance in cooperative species 3) investigating the role of scent communication in cooperation and breeding decisions, and 4) understanding the genetic structure of animal societies. Whilst I am fascinated by evolution and behaviour, continuing declines in biodiversity have prompted me to increasingly focus my research on conservation, with recent projects investigating the impact of climate change, mitigating human-wildlife conflict and using conservation genetics to improve species reintroductions.

I am a behavioural ecologist with broad interests in conservation, ecology and animal behaviour. My research investigates how conflict arises and is resolved in cooperative species, and how individual level behaviour can have group and population level effects. I study within- and between-group conflict and population dynamics in banded mongooses: specifically, I am interested in why individuals are evicted from their group and what happens to them after they leave. I also study aggressive interactions between neighbouring groups in the population to understand what drives groups to engage in costly fights with one another. I aim to explain how these conflicts can affect the behaviour and spatial organisation of groups, and the dynamics of the wider population.

I’m a Lecturer in Ecology and Evolution, at the Organismal and Evolutionary biology research Programme at University of Helsinki. My main research focus is on how early life environment and stress connect to behaviour and evolution of life history traits in social mammals, including humans. I am also a researcher in the Finnish birth cohort FinnBrain, at the University of Turku, where I investigate the mediating role of cellular ageing in linking maternal welfare and early life stress exposure to child developmental outcomes. Understanding effects of stress exposure and its interactions with the social environment is important, because it has wide implications on health and wellbeing across species, including our own. In my spare time, I enjoy the magic of bringing music alive, through singing at the Helsinki Academic Choral Society.

My PhD at Oxford Brookes University focuses on wild sleep ecology. I’m investigating how the social relationships of banded mongooses influence their group sleep, including who sleeps with whom, individual sleep cycles, den selection, and the impact of humans and changing climates on their sleeping behaviours. To do this, we’re using a variety of miniaturized, animal-mounted technologies to help us see where we quite literally cannot, including proximity loggers, accelerometers, and local environmental monitoring devices. Previously, I’ve worked across Africa with a range of species, from the southern white rhino to the spotted hyena, and I’m primarily interested in non-invasive methods to support human-wildlife coexistence. I also love wildlife photography and documenting conservation stories with my camera. In my free time, you’ll mostly find me walking my dogs, editing photos, or reading fantasy novels.

My research is on the cleaning symbiosis between banded mongooses and common warthogs, a rare mammal-mammal mutualism which is restricted to certain mongoose groups. We have little detailed understanding of the behaviours that are used to coordinate and sustain interspecific cooperation among animals; my focus is on how individual differences affect cleaning engagement, the role of social learning, interspecific communication between the two parties, and geographic variation in the behaviour. I love working at our field site and conducting personality trials, and find these questions super interesting as they can help us understand why animals behave the way they do, and how a changing environment may affect them. Besides research, I work as a photographer and in communications, and in my free time I love reading a long book or sea-swimming.

I am interested in the evolution of cooperation and conflict in animal groups. I joined the Banded Mongoose Research Project as a PhD student in September 2025 to work on the evolution and life-history consequences of warfare, both in the mongooses and more generally. I will be trying to tackle these questions using a combination of theoretical models, the project’s long-term database, and empirical fieldwork. Previously I studied the anti-predator behaviour of wild Caribbean reef squid (Sepioteuthis sepioidea). These animals coordinate their defensive behaviour across a shoal of 3 – 20 individuals in an attempt to avoid being eaten – a consistent struggle given they can encounter predators up to seven times per hour! Outside my research, I sing professionally as a countertenor and in my free time I can normally be found either on, in or under the sea.

I’m creating an ATLAS system to monitor banded mongoose movement, which will be used to understand attraction-avoidance dynamics between mongoose groups. I’m originally from Upstate New York, where I worked on birds, amphibians, and carnivores. I then moved to the remote Soutpansberg mountainous to work on wild primates and leopards in rare Afromontane mist-belt forests. I love the physical challenge of scaling cliffs and crawling through wet forests, and was lucky enough to receive a Presidential Fellowship from The State University of New York to continue my work on primate-predator interactions for my PhD. After returning to the US, I worked on the ecosystem impacts of mountain lions. In 2021, I moved to Germany to work as a postdoc at The Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, before moving to the UK in 2024. In my free time, I love lone hiking in the backcountry, lifting weights, and bad weather.

I’m a final year PhD student at Swansea University investigating inheritance routes, scent gland histology and glandular microbiomes in banded mongooses, under the supervision of Dr Hazel Nichols. My main research interests lie in understanding the evolution of social behaviour and exploring the genetic and cultural routes in which information can be inherited across generations. While I have always been curious about the relative contributions of nature and nurture in shaping who we are, it was researching bumblebees during my undergraduate research project at the University of Stirling that really ignited my interest in social behaviour. I was introduced to the banded mongooses during my master’s degree at the University of Exeter and have continued pursuing my research interests using this system during my PhD. Outside of my research, I’m at my happiest turning my love of wildlife into cross-stitch, embroidery or crochet and I attend local art classes where I’ve recently learnt how to paint in watercolour.

I am a PhD student at the University of Helsinki. Joining the Banded Mongoose Research Project and studying behaviour in mongooses has been my dream ever since I first read the article about imitation and traditions (Müller & Cant, 2010). My main interest is behavioural ecology, especially consistent individual behavioural differences (animal personality) and social behaviour. In my PhD, I study physiological correlates of variation in personality traits in the banded mongoose. Identifying connections between personality and physiological traits would help us to understand the underlying mechanisms of personality which may offer new tools for e.g., conservation. In my free time, I play football, knit and sew clothes, take pictures of nature, and learn African languages (e.g., Rutooro and Luganda)!

I'm Zoe, joining the Banded Mongoose Project as a PhD student at the University of Exeter, Penryn, in September 2025. My research within the INTERGROUP project will explore how conflict evolves in cooperative systems, specifically focusing on the interplay between group cohesion and individual roles in banded mongooses. Previously, I studied social ontogeny and foraging development in meerkats, which sparked my fascination with behavioural observation and social dynamics. Animal behaviour has become my passion because of the insights and questions that emerge from careful, patient observation of natural systems. Beyond research, I'm passionate about outreach and education, having worked in rewarding roles at animal sanctuaries and nature reserves. To decompress, I can often be found enjoying a good sunset, tap dancing, reading, or crocheting.