Seminars

Nicolas Mathevon examines the evolution of vocal communication through an analysis of songs from more than 3,000 passerine species. The study organizes their acoustic diversity into eight basic motifs and relates motif use to social organization, morphology, mating systems and sound transmission. Tropical forest conditions favor simpler signals such as flat whistles that travel effectively through dense habitat. In temperate regions, dense populations, short breeding seasons and stronger sexual selection favor complex signals such as rapid trills, despite their greater degradation during transmission. The resulting global pattern reflects a changing balance between environmental constraints and selection for complex communication. Online on 30 September 2026, 17:00–18:00 CEST (Europe/Paris; UTC+2), with an optional 15-minute discussion afterward. Open worldwide through Zoom. Use the join information on the organizer's page; its optional registration form subscribes attendees to seminar updates. Organized by LINGUAE's Animal Linguistics Seminar, with Emmanuel Chemla, Lucie Ravaux and Philippe Schlenker. Online via Zoom; public joining instructions on the organizer’s seminar page.

Rachna Reddy studies relationships among wild chimpanzees and bonobos to investigate adolescence as a period of both vulnerability and resilience. Drawing on more than a decade observing chimpanzees, the presentation brings together biological, anthropological, psychological and neuroscientific perspectives through cross-species empirical research. It connects questions about development in our closest living relatives with understanding the human life course; Reddy’s fellowship work also includes a coming-of-age novel informed by the lives of the chimpanzees she studies.

Hans Slabbekoorn examines animal acoustic communication, from birdsong to low-frequency whale calls. Songs and other signals support courtship and conflict, while the acoustic properties of habitats shape their evolution. Expanding human noise in terrestrial and aquatic environments is changing the conditions under which these signals function. The lecture considers this acoustic environmental change and the attention needed to preserve animal communication, alongside implications for human physical and mental health.

What do nonhuman primates know about each other and their social environment, how do they allocate their attention, and what are the functional consequences of social decisions in natural settings? Addressing these questions is crucial to hone in on the co-evolution of cognition, social behaviour and communication, and ultimately the evolution of intelligence in the primate order. I will present results from field experimental and observational studies on free-ranging baboons, which tap into the cognitive abilities of these animals. Baboons are particularly valuable in this context as different species reveal substantial variation in social organization and degree of despotism. Field experiments revealed considerable variation in the allocation of social attention: while the competitive chacma baboons were highly sensitive to deviations from the social order, the highly tolerant Guinea baboons revealed a confirmation bias. This bias may be a result of the high gregariousness of the species, which puts a premium on ignoring social noise. Variation in despotism clearly impacted the use of signals to regulate social interactions. For instance, male-male interactions in chacma baboons mostly comprised dominance displays, while Guinea baboon males evolved elaborate greeting rituals that serve to confirm group membership and test social bonds. Strikingly, the structure of signal repertoires does not differ substantially between different baboon species. In conclusion, the motivational disposition to engage in affiliation or aggressiveness appears to be more malleable during evolution than structural elements of the behavioral repertoire; this insight is crucial for understanding the dynamics of social evolution.

Many insect species maintain a nest around which their foraging behaviour is centered, and can use path integration to maintain an accurate estimate of their distance and direction (a vector) to their nest. Some species, such as bees and ants, can also store the vector information for multiple salient locations in the world, such as food sources, in a common coordinate system. They can also use remembered views of the terrain around salient locations or along travelled routes to guide return. Recent modelling of these abilities shows convergence on a small set of algorithms and assumptions that appear sufficient to account for a wide range of behavioural data, and which can be mapped to specific insect brain circuits. Notably, this does not include any significant topological knowledge: the insect does not need to recover the information (implicit in their vector memory) about the relationships between salient places; nor to maintain any connectedness or ordering information between view memories; nor to form any associations between views and vectors. However, there remains some experimental evidence not fully explained by these algorithms that may point towards the existence of a more complex or integrated mental map in insects.

Can nonhuman animals perceive the relation-between-relations? This intriguing question has been studied over the last 40 years; nonetheless, the extent to which nonhuman species can do so remains controversial. Here, I review empirical evidence suggesting that pigeons, parrots, crows, and baboons join humans in reliably acquiring and transferring relational matching-to-sample (RMTS). Many theorists consider that RMTS captures the essence of analogy, because basic to analogy is appreciating the ‘relation between relations.’ Factors affecting RMTS performance include: prior training experience, the entropy of the sample stimulus, and whether the items that serve as sample stimuli can also serve as choice stimuli.

Over the course of evolution, the human race has achieved a number of remarkable innovations, that have enabled us to adapt to and benefit from the environment ever more effectively. The ongoing environmental threats and health disasters of our world have now made it crucial to understand the cognitive mechanisms behind innovative behaviours. In my talk, I will present two research projects with examples of innovation-based behavioural adaptation from the taxonomic kingdom of animals, serving as a comparative psychological model for mapping the evolution of innovation. The first project focuses on the challenge of overcoming physical disability. In this study, we investigated an injured kea (Nestor notabilis) that exhibits an efficient, intentional, and innovative tool-use behaviour to compensate his disability, showing evidence for innovation-based adaptation to a physical disability in a non-human species. The second project focuses on the evolution of fire use from a cognitive perspective. Fire has been one of the most dominant ecological forces in human evolution; however, it is still unknown what capabilities and environmental factors could have led to the emergence of fire use. In the core study of this project, we investigated a captive population of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) that has been regularly exposed to campfires during the cold winter months for over 60 years. Our results suggest that macaques are able to take advantage of the positive effects of fire while avoiding the dangers of flames and hot ashes, and exhibit calm behaviour around the bonfire. In addition, I will present a research proposal targeting the foraging behaviour of predatory birds in parts of Australia frequently affected by bushfires. Anecdotal reports suggest that some birds use burning sticks to spread the flames, a behaviour that has not been scientifically observed and evaluated. In summary, the two projects explore innovative behaviours along three different species groups, three different habitats, and three different ecological drivers, providing insights into the cognitive and behavioural mechanisms of adaptation through innovation.

The goal of neuroscience is to understand how the nervous system controls behaviour, not only in the simplified environments of the lab, but also in the natural environments for which nervous systems evolved. In pursuing this goal, neuroscience research is supported by an ever-larger toolbox, ranging from optogenetics to connectomics. However, often these tools are coupled with reductionist approaches for linking nervous systems and behaviour. This course will introduce advanced techniques for measuring and analysing behaviour, as well as three fundamental principles as necessary to understanding biological behaviour: (1) morphology and environment; (2) action-perception closed loops and purpose; and (3) individuality and historical contingencies [1]. [1] Gomez-Marin, A., & Ghazanfar, A. A. (2019). The life of behavior. Neuron, 104(1), 25-36

Language appears to be the most complex system of animal communication described to date. However, its precursors were present in the communication of our evolutionary ancestors and are likely shared by our modern ape cousins. All great apes, including humans, employ a rich repertoire of vocalizations, facial expressions, and gestures. Great ape gestural repertoires are particularly elaborate, with ape species employing over 80 different gesture types intentionally: that is towards a recipient with a specific goal in mind. Intentional usage allows us to ask not only what information is encoded in ape gestures, but what do apes mean when they use them. I will discuss recent research on ape gesture, on how we approach the question of decoding meaning, and how with new methods we are starting to integrate long overlooked aspects of ape gesture such as group and individual variation, and expression and emotion into our study of these signals.

It is critical for all animals to make appropriate, but also flexible, foraging decisions, especially when facing starvation. Sensing olfactory information is essential to evaluate food quality before ingestion. Previously, we found that Drosophila larvae switch their response to certain odors from aversion to attraction when food deprived. The neural mechanism underlying this switch in behavior involves serotonergic modulation and reconfiguration of odor processing in the early olfactory sensory system. We now investigate if a change in hunger state also influences other behavioral decisions. Since it had been shown that fly larvae can perform cannibalism, we investigate the effect of food deprivation on feeding on dead conspecifics. We find that fed fly larvae rarely use dead conspecifics as a food source. However, food deprivation largely enhances this behavior. We will now also investigate the underlying neural mechanisms that mediate this enhancement and compare it to the already described mechanism for a switch in olfactory choice behavior. Generally, this flexibility in foraging behavior enables the larva to explore a broader range of stimuli and to expand their feeding choices to overcome starvation.

Social insects fight disease as a collective. Their colonies are protected against disease by the combination of the individual immune defenses of all colony members and their jointly performed nest- and colony-hygiene. This social immunity is achieved by cooperative behaviors to reduce pathogen load of the colony and to prevent transmission along the social interaction networks of colony members. Individual and social immunity interact: performance of sanitary care can affect future disease susceptibility, yet also vice versa, individuals differing in susceptibility adjust their sanitary care performance to their individual risk of infection. I present the integrated approach we use to understand how colony protection arises from the individual and collective actions of colony members and how it affects pathogen communities and hence disease ecology.

The evolution of vision revolutionised animal biology, and eyes have evolved in a stunning array of diverse forms over the past half a billion years. Among these are curious duplicated visual systems, where eyes can be spread across the body and specialised for different tasks. Although it sounds radical, duplicated vision is found in most major groups across the animal kingdom, but remains poorly understood. We will explore how and why animals collect information about their environment in this unusual way, looking at examples from tropical forests to the sea floor, and from ancient arthropods to living jellyfish. Have we been short-changed with just two eyes? Dr Lauren Sumner-Rooney is a Research Fellow at the OUMNH studying the function and evolution of animal visual systems. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree at Oxford in 2012, and her PhD at Queen’s University Belfast in 2015. She worked as a research technician and science communicator at the Royal Veterinary College (2015-2016) and held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin (2016-2017) before arriving at the Museum in 2017.