Staff profile

Postdoctoral Researcher, Alexander von Humboldt Fellow

I'm a behavioural ecologist and I study FEASTs - Foraging Ecology And Social Ties. My comparative research focuses on social transmission processes, such as using social information to find food and food sharing. Specifically, I am interested in how social ties help individuals navigate their environments and buffer environmental risks. I study how social, economic, and ecological factors influence individuals’ behaviours, from where or what to forage, to decisions about whom to hang out with. 

I have previously studied how mixed-species groups are formed and maintained, linking individual behaviour to community processes. Using individually PIT-tagged songbirds in Wytham Woods near Oxford as a model system, I combined observational and experimental approaches to study social information use and collective foraging. 

After my PhD, my focus turned to human behavioural ecology and I am currently developing a cross-cultural analysis of food production and food sharing networks in subsistence communities.

Read more about my research on my website, fhillemann.github.io.