UC biologist unlocks secrets of animal sociality

The assistant professor in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences is a behavioral ecologist who examines the roles of sociality and cognition in animals, what they know and remember about their place in those societies and how they use that knowledge to their advantage. She uses behavioral experiments and computational methods to infer what animals need to know about their social worlds based on how they choose to interact with each other.

Hobson’s new experiments will focus on how social species like parakeets structure their societies, and will determine the relative importance of power, social support, and information within groups.

“This new phase is exciting because I’ve been working mainly on aggression, rank and hierarchies with the parakeets. But we know that aggression isn’t everything,” Hobson said.

“This new series of experiments will also look at the role of friendlier interactions — how birds might work to support each other socially in non-aggressive ways — and also at information, how knowing about each other’s relationships may provide an advantage.”

It takes both experience and creativity to come up with an experimental study that can unlock the secrets of animal cognition and behavior. Hobson said she often brainstorms by escaping to a stairwell landing overlooking UC’s campus and using its floor-to-ceiling windows as a canvas for her dry-erase markers.

“It has to be storming outside for massive effectiveness,” she said laughing. “I write and think about what we know about socially and cognitively complex species. Where are the gaps? What have we missed? What don’t we know?”

Hobson has ambitious research plans involving new experiments that will allow her to draw comparisons about social structures across species such as the parakeets, quail and fish she studies in her lab.

“By having these very similar experimental setups and doing all the analyses within the same lab, we have a lot of control over the process,” she said.

She joined UC in 2019 after earning a doctorate from New Mexico State University and completing two postdoctoral fellowships. She is an associate editor for the journals Ornithology and npj Complexity and serves on the editorial board for the journal Behavioral Ecology.

In her lab, she mentors postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and even undergraduate biology students who get a chance to work on original research projects. Her lab has examined the behavior of a myriad of species from ants to penguins to parrots.

“I’m super excited about the new funding. The NSF grant will give us a lot of stability in the lab because it will support our parakeet work for the next five years,” she said. “This longer-term funding makes it possible to design complex experiments that examine social structure from many angles and can give us more comprehensive insight into animal sociality and cognition.”

Through the grant, Hobson also is creating a series of interactive computer games where students learn more about social scenarios by following a set of rules similar to those governing animals like monk parakeets. The students then learn how to analyze the data they create and apply those same analyses to actual data collected on animal behavior.

That serves as an introduction to working with research data that can show that computational analysis doesn’t have to be scary, she said.

“The hardest part is to get students over the fear of learning quantitative skills and programming,” she said. “A lot of students are intimidated by that. They want to work with animals but so many biology fields are quantitatively intensive, so these computational skills are a critically important part of career preparation.”

Hobson teaches several courses pertinent to her research, including Analytical Tools for Behavior, which gives students experience with quantitative tools like coding by using animal behavior concepts and data from little blue penguins collected at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden.

Members of Hobson’s research team are applying what they learned in her lab to their own budding careers.

UC doctoral student Darby Moore was featured this year in a nature documentary for her work with endangered great green macaws in Costa Rica. Darby is currently starting her own research project on monk parakeets, supported by a prestigious NSF Graduate Student Fellowship award.

The magazine Scientific American highlighted the expertise of Hobson Lab postdoctoral researcher Grace Smith-Vidaurre in a story about the amazing adaptability of invasive parrots. Grace is now an assistant professor at Michigan State University and is planning long-term collaborations between her new lab group and the Hobson Lab.

Caring daily for the animals in the lab has its own rewards.

“Everyone loves the bobs,” recent UC graduate Sophia Clemen said of the bobwhite quail. “They definitely have their own personality quirks.”

UC’s Department of Biological Sciences is growing in enrollment from students eager to take advantage of its prolific and diverse research programs, Hobson said.

“There has been a big increase in the number of freshmen who want to major in biology,” she said.

“Most universities in the United States don’t have that many faculty working on sensory biology and behavior in one department, which is something really unusual about our Department of Biological Sciences here at UC. It provides students with great opportunities to study several aspects of animal behavior and sensory ecology.”

Hobson said she is excited about what they might discover next.

“We've built up a good foundation of exploring social systems, rank and dominance hierarchies. Now we can go in and understand the details,” she said.

Featured image at top: Elizabeth Hobson, an assistant professor of biological sciences in UC's College of Arts and Sciences studies behavioral ecology in her lab. Photo Illustration/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand