Dr. Mauricio Cantor

My primary research goal is to formally link behavioural ecology to the ecology of interactions, both among individuals and species, by confronting theoretical models with empirical data. I am mostly interested in understanding how animal social systems emerge from simple rules among interacting individuals, and how selection acts on the individual sociality and the emergent collective social patterns. I primarily use cetaceans as research models due to their behavioural diversity, learning ability and social complexity—not to mention the exciting fieldwork challenges that come with studying them. My empirical work combines classical methods with emerging technologies for collecting and processing data; and relies on multiple statistical and modelling methods for analyzing the resulting large volume of data. My theoretical work has been inspired by sociobiology, complex systems and network theory to produce conceptual frameworks and in silico experiments in animal ecology. To not limit myself to taxon-oriented research, I collaborate with many multidisciplinary international. My colleagues and I tackle questions on structure and function of a broad range of phenomena across multiple biological scales—such as molecule networks, individual ecological specialization, population and social dynamics of marine and terrestrial animals, aquatic food webs, and ecological interactions over biogeographic scales.