Saein Lee
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saeinlee.bsky.social
Saein Lee
@saeinlee.bsky.social
Primatologist l Postdoc @UZH : curiosity, prosociality, social norm, social learning l Gibbon 🧑‍💻l DISI 2022 fellow l NGS explorer l FAMELAB
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New paper alert 🚨!

Immature gibbons gradually develop their feeding behavior while taking the opportunity to socially learn from their mothers. Learn more by reading our paper!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#gibbon #sociallearning #ape #primates
Developmental Changes in Feeding Behavior and Maternal Influences in Wild Javan Gibbons (Hylobates moloch) - International Journal of Primatology
Immature primates acquire skills through social learning from more experienced individuals. The needing-to-learn hypothesis posits that prolonged juvenility evolved to support such social learning und...
link.springer.com
Reposted by Saein Lee
Young chimps play weird with tools and other objects & this can lead to innovation! Moss sponging, doll play, leaf clipping to ask for carrying. If copied and retained, rare kid innovations can contribute to cultural complexity 🧪🔬🐵
My fav article I've ever worked on: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
October 21, 2025 at 12:15 PM
The FameLab Swiss final is happening tomorrow, 24th Sept at 6pm!

Live stream www.youtube.com/live/jIc30Fq...

In person, free entry in the Aula, 1st floor, PROGR in Bern (Waisenhauspl. 30, 3011 Bern).

See you tomorrow 🤗 #famelab #sciencecommunication #talkingscience #primates #primatology
FameLab Final 2025
YouTube video by FameLab Switzerland
www.youtube.com
September 23, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Just in: insect application to wounds happens also in East African chimpanzees: share.google/WwKqxSy4t0e2...
Insect applications to open wounds by chimpanzees in the wild: first insights from East African chimpanzees - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Insect applications to open wounds by chimpanzees in the wild: first insights from East African chimpanzees
share.google
August 27, 2025 at 5:31 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Important new work (from Elisa Bandini,
@ctennie.bsky.social, @sofiaforss.bsky.social et al.) addressing an elephant in the room - how weird are our weirdest apes, and how is that skewing research efforts?

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
July 14, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
🚨What is behavioral innovativeness? And how can we make sense of claims that individuals or taxa are 'more innovative' than others? In their new EJPS paper, Grant Ramsey & @andrameneganzin.bsky.social defend a novel, multidimensional & multilevel account of innovativeness.👇

#philsci #HPbio #evobio
July 2, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Hi everyone, happy to share with all of you the paper from the second chapter of my PhD, where we show that more exploratory birds use a broader foraging niche, linking consistent behavior with ecological flexibility. I hope you can enjoy it and share it!!!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Exploration Behavior Is Consistent and Associated With Foraging Behavior in Island Songbirds
We tested the neophobia threshold hypothesis in six landbird species, including four Darwin's finches. Exploration behavior was consistent over time and contexts, with species exhibiting greater fora....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
July 10, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Our #study finds that #male #dominance isn't the norm among #primates, and starts to unravel what shapes flexibility in intersexual power

paper (OA) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2500405122

press release https://www.mpg.de/24986976/0630-evan-beyond-the-alpha-male-150495-x?c=2249
July 8, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
🚨New article in Proc B:
"Reciprocity evolves more readily in competitive than cooperative socio-ecologies"

Using agent-based evolutionary models, we show that reciprocity emerges more reliably in competitive environments with high exploitation risk.

🔗 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Reciprocity evolves more readily in competitive than cooperative socio-ecologies | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Tracking what others did and matching other’s expected actions is seen across a range of biological systems. As reciprocal matching rewards and reinforces cooperators and punishes and discourages non-...
royalsocietypublishing.org
July 9, 2025 at 5:00 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
We have a new paper out in @cp-iscience.bsky.social reporting that more socially integrated female chimpanzees have lower offspring mortality 🧪 #evosky #primates #primatology #anthropology www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Socially integrated female chimpanzees have lower offspring mortality
In humans and other social mammals, more socially connected females often have higher fitness. Yet evidence linking female sociality to offspring surv…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 1, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
New paper in @behavecol.bsky.social (link: academic.oup.com/beheco/advan...)
led by PhD student @marcofele.bsky.social using hard-won data from our amazing baboon team. Our @swanseauni.bsky.social press release:
www.swansea.ac.uk/press-office...
We introduce the idea of a "social spandrel".....
Baboons walk in line for friendship, not survival, new study finds
Researchers at Swansea University have discovered that baboons walk in lines, not for safety or strategy, but simply to stay close to their friends.
www.swansea.ac.uk
June 3, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
🚨CogSci preprint alert🚨
When you look at reviews, do you like to focus on positive or negative ones?
@stepalminteri.bsky.social, @thecharleywu.bsky.social and I set out to investigate how learning rate biases differ between individual and social learning in our new study.
osf.io/bcrw9_v2
🧵 below!
OSF
osf.io
May 26, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Had a fantastic #pintofscience night in Baden! 🌟

Sharing stories of curiosity & sociality in humans and non-human primates with laughs, interactions, and great questions.

This is why I do science communication to spark curiosity and make science joyful. 🐒

Massive thanks to organizers!
May 22, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Great opportunity! If you are interested in it, please check the links below the original post.
Interested in biology and comparative psychology, and working in an interdisciplinary project and research team? I’m advertising two PhD positions on the evolutionary origins of cooperative sociality and communication (start 1.10.) at the University of Konstanz👇 links below!
May 17, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Updated the reinforcement (+social) learning models in my cultural evolution agent-based modelling in R tutorial. Now uses cmdstan rather than rstan (and more importantly now works again).

On github (Model 17):
github.com/amesoudi/cul...

and bookdown:
bookdown.org/amesoudi/ABM...
May 14, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Don't miss Pint of Science Switzerland. See you in... Baden!

📍Kulturhaus Royal - Baden, Bahnhofstrasse 39
📆20 May - 6.30PM
🎤Talks in 🇩🇪 and 🇬🇧
🎟️FREE ENTRY

Program: pintofscience.ch/event/scienc...

@pintsworld.bsky.social #PintCH #Pint25 @uzh-ch.bsky.social @fnhw.bsky.social
May 13, 2025 at 5:43 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
New paper alert 📢
Young wild chimpanzees from the @taichimpproject.bsky.social show attachment types with their mothers similar to human children. Only they do not display patterns related to disorganized attachment. Read our new paper in Nature Human Behavior

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Evidence of organized but not disorganized attachment in wild Western chimpanzee offspring (Pan troglodytes verus) - Nature Human Behaviour
This study of 50 wild Western chimpanzee mother–offspring dyads revealed no evidence of disorganized attachment. Instead, offspring exhibited secure-like and insecure avoidant-like behaviours during t...
www.nature.com
May 12, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
I'm THRILLED that our book is out. This book, with other 60 contributors from across the globe (!!!) is a love letter to the science we want to do, and a how-to guide for how to do it. Please read it and share it!
OUT NOW: A Field Guide to Cross-Cultural Research on Childhood Learning reimagines how we study kids—globally. With voices from 21 countries, this inclusive, practical guide bridges disciplines and challenges Western-centric research. buff.ly/0qk1cOs
May 9, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Thrilled to have the 1st project in my @snsf-ch.bsky.social Ambizione fellowship in @pnas.org this week. With Vic Martignac, @samellisq.bsky.social and @savinggorillas.bsky.social we asked what is a good social environment for a gorilla? And the answer was complicated... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Group traits moderate the relationship between individual social traits and fitness in gorillas | PNAS
Evidence across a broad range of disciplines has demonstrated how individuals’ social environments can impact their health, lifespan, reproduction,...
www.pnas.org
May 7, 2025 at 3:24 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
phys.org/news/2025-05...
Unravelling some of the complexity of animal cultures & conservation with @lucymaplin.bsky.social,
@emma-carroll.bsky.social, Alison L Greggor, Andrew Whiten, @ellengarland.bsky.social & contributors to our theme issue
doi.org/10.1098/rstb... @royalsocietypublishing.org
Animal culture recognized as key factor in new conservation strategies
Exeter scientists are among those who have discovered many animals learn and pass on behaviors through social learning or culture, which could have important implications for conservation.
phys.org
May 2, 2025 at 3:49 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Enjoyed reading @matteomameli.bsky.social's short book on 'human nature'. While I think that we should park the term 'human nature', Mameli correctly points out that how we think about 'human nature' influences how we think about ourselves.

#philbio

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/why-human...
Why Human Nature Matters
Does human nature constrain social and political change, or do social and political changes transform human nature? Why Human Nature Matters argues that the ans…
www.bloomsbury.com
May 2, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
new preprint: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/9055

Code used in research is key to the methods and scientific output and we should ensure it’s not just "available" but easy to verify and build on.

We present a practical tool to code review for scientists 🧪

work with @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social
Code review in practice: A checklist for computational reproducibility and collaborative research in ecology and evolution
ecoevorxiv.org
April 25, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
Here's an article we did for @theconversation.com about our new study looking at #empathy in chimpanzees and bonobos, and why we need to move beyond stereotypes

theconversation.com/our-ape-cous...
Our ape cousins show us empathy has deep evolutionary roots – new research
It may be time to move on from species stereotypes.
theconversation.com
May 1, 2025 at 11:03 AM
New paper alert 🚨!

Immature gibbons gradually develop their feeding behavior while taking the opportunity to socially learn from their mothers. Learn more by reading our paper!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#gibbon #sociallearning #ape #primates
Developmental Changes in Feeding Behavior and Maternal Influences in Wild Javan Gibbons (Hylobates moloch) - International Journal of Primatology
Immature primates acquire skills through social learning from more experienced individuals. The needing-to-learn hypothesis posits that prolonged juvenility evolved to support such social learning und...
link.springer.com
April 26, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Reposted by Saein Lee
🙌 Hot off the presses @natcomms.nature.com! We created a custom #Minecraft environment to study a long-standing puzzle in cognitive science:
How do humans flexibly adapt their individual and social learning strategies in dynamic, realistic situations? Check it out 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇
April 25, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Reposted by Saein Lee
New paper alert! - number 2

Social contagion underpins key elements of social interaction, including empathy & social learning.

Here, we review research on primate social contagion and offer a unifying framework

available open-access! 👇👇 w/ Georgia Sandars

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Social contagion in primates: Moderating factors and significance for individuals and the group
Social contagion, which involves behavioural and emotional state matching, is a crucial process for healthy social functioning. In humans as well as o…
www.sciencedirect.com
April 25, 2025 at 11:22 AM