About us

The SN Behavioural Ecology Lab questions nature and strives to find clues to possible answers. The group was founded at the arrival of Shinichi Nakagawa (SN) to the Department of Zoology, the University of Otago in 2008. We test a wide range of scientific hypotheses using organisms from different taxa (see our research page). We work in collaboration with many other researchers from this department, other departments and from other universities all over the world. We strive to publish high quality research papers, both experimental and reviews - and we love working on meta-analyses and comparative studies.

Our group follows three basic mottos:
1. Questions are more important than organisms.
2. Think like a scientist and act like one too.
3. Complete the cycle if you are going to do it at all (the cycle = conceiving an idea, carrying out a study and writing results up for publication).

Contact

Department of Zoology, University of Otago, 340 Great King Street, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

Tel: 64 3 479 5046, Fax: 64 3 479 7584, Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

News

May 2013: SN was awarded The Rowheath Trust Award and Carl Smith Medal.

Apr 2013: Carlos arrived to start his PhD with SN.

Apr 2013: Lizzie and Therese temporarily joined our lab for exchange and internship-type visit.

Mar 2013: Losia, Katie and Shin got a meta-analysis paper accepted by Ageing Research Revievs.

Mar 2013: Losia has her JEB paper picked as "paper of the month" by the journal editor-in-chef.

Mar 2013: Alistair handed in his PhD thesis. Congratulations!

Mar 2013: Mike and Nat both got distinctions for their MSc theses. Great!

Mar 2013: R-squared paper by SN got recommendations from Faculty of 1000.

Feb 2013: Effect size paper by SN got recommendations from Faculty of 1000.

Feb 2013: SN gave seminars on meta-analysis at the Hokkaido University and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan.

Jan 2013: Nat handed in his MSc thesis. Congratulations!

Jan 2013: Mike handed in his MSc thesis. Congratulations!

Jan 2013: Alistair won a departmental prize for best paper published by a male student. Awesome!

Dec 2012: Dr. Wolfgang Forstemeier and Dr. Simon Griffith visited us and gave great seminars for the department.

Dec 2012: Alistair went to Prof. Volker Grimm (Germany) for a scholarship and to learn more about computer modeling.

Nov 2012: Shinichi was awarded Rutherford Discovery Fellowship. So awesome! [media]

Nov 2012: SN, Losia and Mike gave talks at the NRCGD/Gravida conference at Massey, Palmerston North.

Nov 2012: Losia's paper on Nematoda mitogenomes got accepted to the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

News Archive

Latest Blog Post

"Is the small world really that small?" by Echo Yu-Hsun Hsu

(new posts published approx. fortnightly)