Research Directions

My research focuses on understanding the social and
ecological determinants of social evolution and the ecological consequences of sociality.

I am using an integrative approach that includes behavioral observation, experimental manipulation, and theoretical modeling, to study the fascinating phenomena of social evolution. The empirical systems I use include (1) the joint-nesting bird species, Taiwan yuhina, in which several unrelated females lay eggs in the same nest and group members provide communal parental care, (2) the grey-capped social weaver: a colonial cooperative breeders, living in extended family groups, in Kenya, and (3) the burying beetles, Nicrophorus nepalensis, a cooperative breeding social insect but cooperating with non-kin, in Taiwan.

Location: Interdisciplinary Research Building for Science and Technology C206
Tel: +886-2-2787-2281

Sheng-Feng Shen
Research Fellow