The evolution of cooperation in bat societies
Gerald Carter
Professor, Department of Evoluton, Ecology, and Organismal Biology
Ohio State University, USA
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Gerald Carter studies the evolution and development of cooperative relationships. His lab is working to develop vampire bats as an experimental model system for understanding how individuals form new cooperative relationships and regulate existing ones. Experiments involve tracking and experimentally manipulating networks of association, social grooming, and food sharing (regurgitated blood) over time, between individuals that vary in kinship and past social experience. Gerry Carter is an Assistant Professor of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University and a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Previously, he was a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Collective Behavior at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany and a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellow. He did his BSc at Cornell University, MSc at Western University, and PhD at University of Maryland. Outside of his research, he is also interested in improving incentive structures in science. His website is socialbat.org.
