An aerial view of the mouse enclosures at Liddell Field Station.
Model Organism, Meet Real World: I did my PhD work studying social behavior of wild primates in their natural habitats (yes, it was amazing!). But while long-term primate studies have revealed many insights into social behavior and fitness, they are constrained by (i) the slow life histories of primates, (ii) wild primates live far away from US institutions, and (iii) they are generally not manipulable/experimental.
So as a postdoc I've been trying to take the best of the behavioral ecology world--animals living outside, with ample space, and natural numbers of social partners and marry it to the best of the model lab organism world--a fast pace of life, fully developed molecular and cellular tools, tractability (i.e. 24/7 data collection), and infinite experimental possibilities.
Mouse social networks from Vogt, Zipple, et al 2022 (bioRxiv)
To do so, I study the social behaviors of the biomedical model organism, the C57BL/6 lab mouse, outside in large enclosures. Mice are extremely social species. Under natural conditions, their lives are largely dominated by social considerations--competing with others (especially among males) and cooperating when possible (e.g. co-nesting in females). But in a tiny lab cage zero or few social partners, those behaviors are rarely expressed or studied in an ecological relevant way. The enclosures in which I work are about 10,000 times the size of a standard mouse cage and allow for these rich social behaviors, and variation in them, to be expressed.
You can read about our first set of results from this study system, from first author Caleb Vogt here.