Stephanie L King
@stephanielking.bsky.social
Professor of Animal Behaviour @ University of Bristol | cetacean communication and cognition group | loves dogs | PI @ Shark Bay Dolphin Research | she/her 🏳️🌈
Social play is key for development in many animals, yet how solitary species with single young acquire playmates has remained a quandary. We unlock this using long-term data from 31 Bornean orangutan mother-offspring pairs in our new publication in PNAS. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2621225123. 🧵
!! New in @science.org !! How do animals learn broad skills necessary for survival in the wild? Our latest study on wild Sumatran orangutans at Suaq provides answers. 1/11 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
How 8 years of social and individual learning interact to shape ecological competence in orangutans
Cultural learning permeates human skill and knowledge acquisition. To understand its importance for nonhuman apes, we analyzed just under 7000 records of behavioral bouts of social and individual lear...
science.org
I’ve come to the end of my 5-year term as a Trustee of @asab.org & Executive Editor of its journal, #AnimalBehaviour. It's been a real privilege to hold these roles & I’m grateful to all those who have made it such a productive & enjoyable experience. 🙏 Please support Society journals.
Please help spread the word: Wilkinson lab at U Maryland, College Park, is hiring a postdoc to join our collaborative ongoing NIH-funded project titled “Social stress, epigenetic and immune function across bat lifespans.” umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UMCP/job/Uni...
Post-Doctoral Associate
Job Description Summary Organization's Summary Statement: The Wilkinson lab at the University of Maryland, College Park, is hiring a postdoc to join an ongoing NIH-funded project titled “Social stress...
umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
The result of 10+ years of fieldwork & analysis of 1000s of data points is out now in @natecoevo.nature.com... and on the cover! Mongoose pre-emptive behaviour & intergroup conflict Congratulations @josharbon.bsky.social @juliekern.bsky.social #AmyMorris-Drake doi.org/10.1038/s415...
🧬🐬 Culture may leave a molecular footprint. Our new study on Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins @researchdolphin.bsky.social explores how a socially learned behaviour — sponging— may be reflected in DNA methylation. OA: doi.org/10.1098/rstb... Hosted by a Phil Trans B special issue:
Another new paper out this week: A culturally transmitted foraging technique in Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins can be predicted by DNA-methylation levels royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
A culturally transmitted foraging technique in Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins can be predicted by DNA-methylation levels
Abstract. Cultural repertoires can influence access to resources and fitness across species, impacting individuals' environmental niches and social network
royalsocietypublishing.org
Nice to see one of my photos of the #SharkBay sponging dolphins on the cover of this #PhilTransB special issue 📸
Royal Society Publishing@royalsocietypublishing.org · 3mo agoNew issue of #PhilTransB: Ecological #epigenetics at the intersection of behaviour and life history variation in non-model animals. Read #OA: buff.ly/6v4pqCo
Coverage of our recent opinion piece in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social on whether animals have names www.science.org/content/arti...
Are dolphins the only animals that call each other by name?
Science chats with cognitive psychologist Kelly Jaakkola about why this complex behavior is so difficult to find in the animal kingdom
science.org
Do animals use names? Conceptual and empirical criteria: Trends in Cognitive Sciences www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Do animals use names? Conceptual and empirical criteria
In recent years, several claims have been put forth suggesting that animals of different species address each other using receiver-specific calls that function as individual names. If accurate, this w...
cell.com
Ever wondered what the bizarre dances of male birds of paradise look like to females? Check out our new preprint! @izziehb.bsky.social @fusanilab.bsky.social “The geometry of visual signaling in a bird-of-paradise” ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
🐒 Work with primates? Have you observed 3 or more individuals grooming together? Polyadic grooming is barely documented and we know little about its distribution. Please take 1–2 minutes to fill out this short survey and share: forms.gle/cLPB1mnwrjJo...
Polyadic grooming in primates
survey about observations of polyadic grooming in primate species
forms.gle
link.springer.com/article/10.1... Just out - complicated integrative perspective with a bunch of great marine mammal folks, including @stephanielking.bsky.social and @andrearavignani.bsky.social. We take an expansive trip through the peripheral effector, CNS, and social domains of vocal rhythm.
In this issue: Deforestation and soybean yields in Brazil, the environmental impact of updated US dietary guidelines, and bird flu transmission in cows. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/auxc50ZcOHn
What a treat - this is the third time the Shark Bay dolphins have made the cover of @pnas.org! You can read more about our new paper - led by @alicebouchard.bsky.social in the current issue www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @bristolbiosci.bsky.social @researchdolphin.bsky.social
Nice coverage of our new paper in National Geographic @alicebouchard.bsky.social www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...
How female dolphins know which males to avoid
A new study suggests female bottlenose dolphins may have a strategy for steering clear of males with a history of pushy mating tactics.
nationalgeographic.com
In our new TREE paper, with M. Borgerhoff Mulder, S. Brosnan and E. Strauss we show that power in animal societies can be subject to control. When high-powered individuals use aggression to gain better access to resources, other group members can respond with "levelling". doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...
Redirecting
doi.org
So happy to welcome @francae.bsky.social to the team! 🥳🐬
Franca Eichenberger@francae.bsky.social · 5mo agoThrilled to have started my new position as Senior Research Associate in Animal Behaviour at the University of Bristol this week, working with @stephanielking.bsky.social & @researchdolphin.bsky.social. Grateful for the great times at the University of St Andrews & excited for the journey ahead! 🐬🌊
New paper in @pnas.org - using playback experiments we provide further evidence that bottlenose dolphins can use individual identity signals + social memory to guide decision-making. Female dolphins use individual vocal labels to track coercive males | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Just finished an incredible two month field season in Shark Bay #Gathaagudu - big thank you to all my wonderful team members 🙏🏻 So much appreciation for the animals and the time I get to spend with them. You have my heart Shark Bay 🫶
Great work from Simone Videsen. We found sperm whale slow clicks maintain extreme isochrony with inter-click intervals up to ~10s. That's beyond any known neural system for precise interval timing. May be a long-distance communication system. nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
NYAS Publications
In this study, we show that male sperm whales produce low-frequency slow clicks at low repetition rates with extreme source levels > 200 dB re 1 µPa (pp), making them the loudest mammalian communicat...
nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Do elephants adress one another with vocalizations that function like human personal names, as was widely reported two years ago? Dharmarajan (2026) argues that this finding may have been just a methodological artefact. 🐘🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Effects of bias when using ‘black box’ models: re-evaluating the evidence for the use of name-like calls by elephants
Machine learning (ML) tools can detect patterns in complex high-dimensional data sets, providing new ways to obtain insights into animal behaviour. Ho…
sciencedirect.com
One month of amazing fieldwork with some of my favourite people - 33 playbacks done for our next whistle study and some lovely observations of dolphin behaviour. Always such a privilege to be here and we are lucky enough to have another month of fieldwork ahead of us 🙏🏻 #sharkbay #gathaagudu
Bonobos and bottlenose dolphins may seem worlds apart, but together they reveal key conditions that foster cooperation beyond group boundaries
Stephanie L King@stephanielking.bsky.social · 7mo agoNew OA paper @royalsocietypublishing.org: What can we learn from bonobos and bottlenose dolphins about the evolution of between-group cooperation? royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... Lovely collab with @lirsamuni.bsky.social Martin Surbeck and Richard Connor.
New OA paper @royalsocietypublishing.org: What can we learn from bonobos and bottlenose dolphins about the evolution of between-group cooperation? royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... Lovely collab with @lirsamuni.bsky.social Martin Surbeck and Richard Connor.
