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Hello! I am Delphine, a behavioural ecologist studying the evolution of social relationships. Animals in a wide variety of species form close bonds, akin to friendships, with some of their group members. With my research, I aim to understand how forming social bonds impacts individual survival and reproduction, and what drives partner choice in the formation of these bonds. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher with Lauren Brent at the Center for Research in Animal Behaviour (CRAB) of the University of Exeter (UK). I am part of FriendOrigins, an ERC Consolidator funded project (864461), aimed at understanding the evolutionary origins of friendship. Taking a cross-species comparative approach I investigate how socio-ecological factors shape social relationships. Together with Lauren Brent, Julie Duboscq, Christof Neumann, Julia Ostner and Oliver Schülke, we are building a collaborative dataset (MacaqueNet) with decades of behavioral data on over ten species of macaques. Studying social relationships in these species, with known phylogenetic relationships and varying social systems and ecological pressures, we can explicitly address the question of which types of social connectedness are adaptive, and why. I also maintain the long-term behavioural database on wild Assamese macaques at the Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary, a field site run by Julia Ostner and Oliver Schülke.
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