About the author
Post-doctoral Fellow at UPenn
If you want to track it you should put a barcode on it. Maybe it was this famous lyric that made behavioural researchers think about adding barcodes to animals they wanted to keep track of. In our interview, Damien Farine talks about how he and his colleagues came up with this idea and how the small tags help to analyse bird behaviour.
Another great idea is the Color App that Thomas Müller presents. In this smartphone game participants engage in defining and deciphering colours using a set of symbols. At the end of this project, Müller’s lab hopes to gain a better understanding of language evolution.
In his Pitch to Publication story, Damian Ruck talks about his recent work on disentangling economic growth from secularization. Which one comes first, and what is needed for sustained economic growth?
In this issue, we also have our first long-form interview on the recent strikes by UK university staff. What was so outraging that almost brought British universities to a stand-still, and what made it end? A fascinating story that has special relevance to early-career researchers.
Of course, we also report on ESLR’s summer workshop back in June. Two of the workshop’s participants summarise their insights from the meeting. Marina Bazhydai reflects on the question in social learning research that, so far, remain unanswered. Dominik Deffner discusses the value of new technologies, such as machine learning, but also gives a shoutout to more dated methods that are still valuable.
Once more I am stunned by the variety of articles in this issue and hope you enjoy reading it. Keep the articles coming!
About the author
Post-doctoral Fellow at UPenn