I am a behavioral ecologist focused on the evolution of social behavior. Group-living animals interact heterogeneously with one another and variation in the strength, stability, and tenor of these interactions shapes emergent group-level attributes. These group-level attributes in turn have powerful consequences for individual fitness and behavioral optima. I interpret animal social behavior through the lens of this dynamic interplay between “bottom-up” effects of individual heterogeneity on group-level patterns and “top-down” effects of group-level phenomena on individual experiences, sometimes termed individual-to-society feedbacks. Specifically, I investigate how patterns of collective decision-making, competitive regimes, and movement arise from social processes and impact fitness in wild animals. To do so, I combine information afforded by long-term monitoring of individually recognized animals with high resolution data gained from animal-mounted bio-loggers and automated image-based tracking technology. 

Peer-Reviewed Publications
Wellens, KR, Lee, SM, Winans, JC, Pusey, AE, & Murray, CM (2022). Female chimpanzee associations with male kin: Trade-offs between inbreeding avoidance and infanticide protection. Animal Behaviour 190: 115-123.

Published Conference Presentation Abstracts
Winans, JC, Wellens, KR, Lonsdorf, EV, & Murray, CM (2018). Mixed evidence for ecological risk aversion in juvenile wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. American Journal of Primatology 80(S1): 61. Podium.
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Funding Sources: Stony Brook University, National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Animal Behavior Society, American Philosophical Society, American Society of Primatologists