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Blair Costelloe

Blair Costelloe

http://www.blaircostelloe.com/

Blair is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Collective Behavior at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz. She is a behavioral ecologist who specializes in ungulate ecology and antipredator behavioral strategies. She earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, where she studied the maternal and antipredator behaviour of Thomson’s gazelles in Kenya. For inquiries about the HerdHover project, please email blair.costelloe@ab.mpg.de

Ben Koger

Ben Koger

http://benkoger.work/

Ben is a Washington Research Foundation postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington. He earned his Ph.D. in 2022 from the University of Konstanz, where his dissertation focused developing and applying computer vision methods to study animals in their natural environments. His postdoctoral work at the University of Washington will focus on applying similar solutions to study the behavior and population management of salmon in Alaska.

Jake Graving

Jake Graving

https://www.ab.mpg.de/person/98162/406633

Jake is a Research Scientist in the Advanced Research Technology Unit at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. His research focuses on the development and application of advanced, general-purpose methods for the measurement and analysis of animal behavior in laboratory and field environments. His work combines techniques from computer vision, deep learning, and modern statistical methods, such as Bayesian causal inference.

Adwait Deshpande

Adwait Deshpande

Adwait has diverse research interests in animal communication, cognition, collective behaviours, social evolution, and a strong inclination towards studying animals in natural settings. During his PhD, he studied social learning and flexibility in the vocal communication of vervet monkeys in South Africa. His work involved both detailed natural observations and novel field experiments with the broader aim of gaining insights into potential precursors of human language. For his postdoc, he plans to investigate collective movement and decision-making in Gelada monkeys and other group-living mammals using technologies developed by the HerdHover team.

Mike Costelloe

Mike Costelloe

https://costelloecreative.com

Mike is an illustrator and web developer who has served as a field assistant, drone pilot, driver, and cook during two field trips to Kenya, and built this project website.

Iain Couzin

Iain Couzin

http://collectivebehaviour.com

Iain is the Director of the Department of Collective Behavior at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Chair of Biodiversity and Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz. He is the supervising principal investigator for this project.

Former Project Members

Sven Lauke

Sven Lauke

Sven was a Masters student in the Department of Biology at the University of Konstanz. He joined the project as a field assistant during two field trips to Kenya and wrote his Masters thesis on the effects of drones on the behavior of savannah ungulates. He is currently a PhD student at the Justus Liebig University where he is studying the effectiveness of “smart fences” in deterring livestock predation by wolves.

Felicitas Oehler

Felicitas Oehler

Felicitas was a Masters student in the Department of Biology at the University of Konstanz. She joined the project as a field assistant and wrote her Masters thesis on the social and collective behaviour of zebras. She is currently doing her PhD at the Wildlife Research Unit of Baden-Württemberg on the social behavior, movement patterns, and interactions of red foxes at European hares.