Erin Siracusa
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Social aging results published in PNAS

12/5/2022

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An older female macaque on Cayo Santiago is groomed by her kin. Photo by Lauren Brent
It feels a bit surreal to announce that our paper on age-based social selectivity in rhesus macaques is now out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  This paper has been several years in the making and we are thrilled that it is finally out in the world. In this paper we use longitudinal data from 204 macaques on the island of Cayo Santiago to show that females macaques show age-based changes in sociality that closely resemble patterns observed in humans. Specifically, we find that females actively narrow their networks as they get older and focus on important partners linked with fitness benefits including kin and 'friends' with whom they had strong and stable connections in previous years. Our findings offer the most conclusive evidence to date for social selectivity in a non-human animal and suggest that these patterns of social aging may have a common evolutionary driver in humans and other primates. You can find out more here by reading the open-access paper or check out this Twitter thread for a point-by-point summary! 
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New paper in iScience

11/30/2022

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I'm excited to announce that my first senior-author paper has been published in iScience! This paper was led by amazing PhD student, Melissa Pavez-Fox. In it we explore two pathways by which sociality can influence survival. Our findings suggest that being high ranking and well socially connected can prevent individuals from being injured, thereby increasing survival. Sociality did not, however, prevent individuals from dying following an injury. This study provides rare insight into one mechanism that can mediate the well-known benefits of sociality on an individual's fitness. ​
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New Review in Biology Letters

3/18/2022

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Excited to announce that our new Review - Social ageing: exploring the drivers of late-life changes in social behaviour in mammals - is now published in Biology Letters! Accumulating evidence suggests that social behaviour & social relationships commonly change across the lifespan in mammals (including humans!) - a phenomenon that has been called "social ageing". But a big outstanding question is how and why these late-life changes in social behaviour occur. Are they simply a consequence of physiological decline, or an adaptive response to changing needs and limitations in old age? Understanding what leads to social aging (and therefore if it can or should be prevented) is important as social relationships play a key role in health & fitness and are likely to be critical to ensuring healthier & longer lifespans. In this Review we describe 7 non-mutually exclusive explanations for social ageing in an effort to encourage researchers to quantify the relative contribution of these  explanations & test interactions between them. We group these into 3 broad categories: (a) changes in sociality that occur as a result of senescence; (b) changes in sociality that result from adaptations to ameliorate the negative effects of senescence; and (c) changes in sociality that result from positive effects of age and demographic changes. We encourage researchers to use this Review as a guide as they work toward a deeper understanding of the drivers of social ageing. Doing so, we hope, will facilitate a clearer understanding of the consequences of social ageing for other patterns of senescence. To find out more you can read the Open Access article here: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0643.

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New article in The Conversation Canada

3/28/2021

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If you're interested in reading a lay summary of our recent findings published in Current Biology, you can find out more from a popular press article I've written for The Conversation Canada. Here I discuss what we can learn about the value of long-term social relationship from red squirrels and what red squirrels can teach us about maintaining those relationships from a distance, in the midst of a pandemic. Read more here. 
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New Paper in Current Biology

1/5/2021

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Excited to announce that the fourth chapter of my PhD, entitled "Familiar Neighbors, but not Relatives, Enhance Fitness in a Territorial Mammal" is now out in Current Biology. In this study we use 22 years of data from the Kluane Red Squirrel project to show that in solitary red squirrels, familiarity with neighbors increases survival and reproductive success. Strikingly, we found that the fitness benefits of maintaining these stable social relationships with neighbors was strong enough to offset age-related declines in survival and reproductive success later in life. You can read the full manuscript here: ​​https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cGA83QW8Ru9t%7E
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Squirrel Camp featured in Uphere Magazine

8/5/2019

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Some of the exciting northern research that the Kluane Red Squirrel project is working on was highlighted in the July issue of Uphere Magazine, featuring yours truly! Always great to see information about the work we are doing here in the boreal forest reaching the larger community. 
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New paper published in Animal Behaviour

8/5/2019

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After a substantial collaborative effort my latest paper is now out in Animal Behaviour! In this study we used audio data, accelerometers & long-term focals to show that squirrels minimize costs of territoriality by adjusting behaviour in response to their social neighbourhood. This has been a particularly excellent case study demonstrating the importance of long-term data. To find out more, read on here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.02.014
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Article published in The Conversation

1/4/2019

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Video courtesy of the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM) 
In an unexpected turn of events, I recently found myself writing an article for The Conversation, Canada ...about Narwhals no less! While Narwhals are far from my area of expertise, the article is a short piece exploring why we see adoption so frequently in the animal kingdom, even though it poses an evolutionary dilemma. The story stemmed from an unusual sighting this past summer in Canada's St. Lawrence River. Researchers from GREMM (the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals) spotted a narwhal swimming with a pod of belugas more than 1,000 km south of his Arctic home. If you're curious what the cause of this unlikely alliance might be, you can read more about it in my article here! The story has also been picked up by The Narwhal and The University of Guelph News.
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Photo featured on cover of Behaviour

11/3/2018

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My photo of a red squirrel mom carrying her 25 day-old pup down a tree was featured on the cover of Behaviour! This news is a bit old since this issue of Behaviour was published in 2017, but I only recently received a copy of the cover, so this is my first opportunity to share it. This issue also features my article on the function of red squirrel 'rattle' vocalizations which you can find here. 
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Successfully defended my PhD thesis!

9/27/2018

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This is my first official post as Dr. Erin Siracusa! I am so pleased to announce that on September 10, 2018, after 5 years of hard work, I successfully defended my PhD thesis. A big thanks to my exam committee Prof. Ben Sheldon (external examiner), Dr. Amy Newman (departmental examiner), Dr. Ryan Norris (committee member), and Dr. Andrew McAdam (advisor) for a challenging and stimulating defense. I must extend a particularly warm thank you to all of my incredible lab mates who have helped to make this such an exciting and rewarding journey. I could not have wished for better scientists and friends to have shared these past 5 years with! 
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    Author

    Hi, I'm Erin. I'm a scientist and nature lover. I also love to write, and although I don't find much time for informal, creative writing lately, I will try to use this space to indulge that passion a little. 

    If you're interested in finding out more about my adventures in the Yukon, head over to my blog here.

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