Alex is an Independent Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour. He is interested in how behaviour has evolved, what the adaptive value of behaviour is, and what the mechanisms that underlie behaviour are. He seeks to understand how the physical structure of behavior changes over evolutionary time, how conserved patterns of behaviour can take on new function, how social interactions are modified by current context, how animals perceive and cognitively process social cues, and how environments – both social and physical – change and are changed by behaviour. His lab borrows computational approaches developed for model laboratory systems and employs them in the wild – places like Lake Tanganyika, the Mediterranean Sea, Central American reefs, and tropical rainforests. Using techniques like computer vision and machine learning, automated tracking of behaviour, and 3D reconstruction of environments, he aims for a quantitative assessment of the expression and value of behaviour in the places it naturally occurs.
Prior to joining the MPI, Alex was the Integrative Biology Fellow, working in collaboration with Mike Ryan, Dan Bolnick, and Hans Hofmann at UT Austin, and before that a JSPS fellow in Osaka working with Masanori Kohda. He completed his PhD with Rob Brooks at the University of NSW, and did his undergraduate honours thesis with Madeleine Beekman and Ben Oldroyd at the University of Sydney and now leads the Behavioural Evolution Lab focused on studies in Lake Tanganyika and the Mediterranean. Alex is active at the interface of science, art, and community engagement, working with many friends including Tabita Rezaire, SUPERFLEX, TBA-21, and Tomás Saraceno.
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I’m not this guy:
But I am this guy (well, I was a long time ago, more wrinkles now, but still have my hair, even if it’s a little grey here and there):
The Behavioural Evolution Lab 