Shannon O'Brien
Ford Foundation Fellow
UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fellow
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Research DescriptionI am interested in understanding animal behavior at the individual level. Specifically, my research examines the consequences of individual variation in social behavior and physiological correlates of sociality, both across time and ecological contexts. Currently, my research focuses on the facultatively social subterranean rodent, highland tuco-tucos (Ctenomys opimus) of northwestern Argentina. This population consists of both solitary and group-living individuals, providing an ideal opportunity to examine the effects of sociality on conspecifics experiencing similar ecological conditions. To address these themes, I combine social network and kinship analyses of wild-caught individuals with lab analyses of individual gut microbial diversity and fecal stress hormones.
Interested? Let’s chat! Email: slobrien@berkeley.edu Linked In: bit.ly/ShannonOBrien Personal Website: https://slobrien.weebly.com/ |
