Lauren Guillette, PhD
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January 2015
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Congratulations to Alexis Breen who recently accepted an offer to undertake a PhD with me, in the Cognition in the Wild lab, headed by Sue Healy.

Alexis starts in February 2015 and will examine physical cognition in nest-building birds. Alexis will be funded by a PhD Studentship from the School of Biology and a St
Leonard's College Scholarship from the University of St Andrews.
December 2014
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See you at the The 22nd International Conference On Comparative Cognition April 15th to 18th, 2015, Radisson Hotel,  Melbourne, Florida
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I was awarded a BBSRC Anniversary Future Leader Fellowship to continue my work examining the role of social learning in nest-building behaviour in birds at the University of St Andrews!
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Check out Animal Cognition in the Wild, a special issue of Behavioural Processes, edited by Sue Healy and Candy Rowe.


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See you at the ASAB Winter Meeting 2014 'Individuals in Groups'
4-5th December, London Zoo

November 2014
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New publication from the Learning and Nest Building team from Dr. Sue Healy's lab!


Mechanisms of copying behaviour in zebra finches Guillette & Healy 2014
October 2014
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New publication from the Learning and Nest Building team from Dr. Sue Healy's lab by lead author Ida Bailey.

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The Cognition in the Wild Lab's display table at Biology Open Day at the University of St Andrews!

See my Outreach page for more details and pictures.
September 2014
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I'm organizing (along with Gareth Miles and Andy MacKenzie) a fantastic even to highlight research by early-career researchers at the University of St Andrews who study behavioural and neural science. This event is hosted by the Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciences.

The Master Lecture will be given by Prof. Nicky Clayton!


Link to the complete program here.

July 2014
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New publication for the Songbird Neuroethology Laboratory in Animal Cognition

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-014-0787-3/fulltext.html


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Two members of the Learning and Nest Building team gave a talk at the European Conference on Behavioural Biology. Sue Healy gave a talk entitled on variation in balckbird nest structure and I gave a talk on social learning in nest-building zebra finches.

June 2014
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New publication for the Songbird Neuroethology Laboratory by lead author Marc Avey.

Open access at PLoS ONE
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0100927



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I attended the #SciCom2014 event at the Charles Darwin House in London. This hands-on collaborative event was fun and productive. Each attendee presented a science outreach idea to a small group and received feedback on their idea and guidance from science communication experts on implementing their plan. 

My activity 'How do birds know what nest to build?' is almost ready to go in both the classroom (target ages 6-12 years old) and at science fairs.

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I gave a talk at the University of the Third Age and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland 2014 Study Day held at the Edinburgh Zoo. It was a great audience and lots of fun! Ida Bailey and myself gave a talk entitled: From Art Critic to Structural Engineers: The Amazing Abilities of Birds. Amanda Seed gave the keynote entitled: Canny Corvids: A case of convergent evolution of intelligence? Click here for the program.

May 2014
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New publication from the Learning and Nest Building team from Dr. Sue Healy's lab!

Food preference and copying behaviour in zebra finches. Guillette et al. 2014

April 2014
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See you at ECBB this July in Prague!

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New publication from the Learning and Nest Building team from Dr. Sue Healy's lab!

Physical cognition: birds learn the structural efficacy of nest material. Bailey et al. 2014


This was featured on the BBC!

March 2014
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New publication from the Learning and Nest Building team from Dr. Sue Healy's lab!

Zebra finches select nest material appropriate for a building task. Muth & Healy 2014

February 2014
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Another new publication from the Learning and Nest Building team from Dr. Sue Healy's lab!

The neural correlated of nesting behaviour in zebra finches. Hall et al. 2014

December 2013
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New publication from Learning and Nest Building team  from Dr. Sue Healy's lab!


http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/6/20130687.abstract?sid=ddf12207-c25d-435d-8477-50a43005cb6f

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See you at
The 21st International Conference On Comparative Cognition March 26th to 29th.  Link to tentative talk schedule here.

I am giving a talk about recent work from my Royal Society/British Academy funded grant about sex differences in copying behaviour in zebra finches.

Sue Healy is giving a talk about how zebra finches learn the structural efficacy of nest material.

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See you at the ASAB Winter Conference!

November 2013
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The International Conference on Individual Differences was a great success with over 200 participants! I gave a talk entitled: Individual differences in learning and exploratory behaviour: Evidence for speed-accuracy trade-offs in black-capped chickadees. Abstract here.

August 2013
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Coffee time for some members of the School of Biology, University of St Andrews at Behaviour2013. Clockwise starting bottom L: Lauren Guillette, Zach Hall, Jeff Graves, Ida Bailey, Maria Tello Ramos, Liam Dougherty and David Prichard

The Learning and Nest Building team from Dr. Sue Healy's lab gave four talks at Behaviour2013 (abstracts here):

Sue Healy: Using nest building in birds to examine the basis of physical cognition

Lauren Guillette: Do zebra finches copy? (pictured left)

Zach Hall: Nest construction in birds: Building the neural circuits (pictured left)

Ida Bailey: Nest building materials: birds picking the right stuff
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Maria, Zach and Lauren found some time to relax and drink on the river boat cruise!
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David found time for a quick nap
July 2013
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See you at the International Conference on Individual Differences


June 2013

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New publication for the Songbird Neuroethology Laboratory by lead author Allison Hahn.

Hahn, A.H., Guillette, L.M., Hoeschele, M., Mennill, D.J., Otter, K.A., Grava, T., Ratcliffe, L.M., & Sturdy, C.B. (In press 21 June 2013). Dominance and geographic information contained within black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) song. To appear in Behaviour.

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I will be attending BEHAVIOUR 2013,  a joint meeting of the 33rd International Ethological Conference (IEC) and the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB). The conference will be held at The Sage Gateshead, Newcastle Gateshead, England between 4th and 8th August 2013. I will be giving a talk entitled 'Do zebra finches copy?' with the co-authors: Kate Morgan, Zach J. Hall, Ida E. Bailey and Susan D. Healy from the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews. Links to conference program and abstract to appear soon.

March 2013

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Members of Dr. Sue Healy's research group at the 2013 Scottish Conference on Animal Behaviour, hosted at the University of Glasgow. (L-R: Kate Morgan, Maria Tello Ramos, Lauren Guillette and David Pritchard).

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View from my balcony at the The 20th International Conference On Comparative Cognition in Melbourne, Florida. I presented a talk entitled: Are individual differences in cognitive performance on a perceptual discrimination task related to exploration? based on research in individual differences in learning that I conducted with Dr. Chris Sturdy, Dr. Marcia Spetch and Danille Lubyk at the University of Alberta. Here is a link to the program (with abstracts).  Dr. Chris Sturdy presented a talk based on our research examining vocal output and personality in songbirds, published in Naturwissenschaften (Guillette, L.M. & Sturdy, C.B. 2011 Individual differences and repeatability in vocal production: stress-induced calling exposes a songbird’s personality. Naturwissenschaften, 98, 977-981. doi: 10.1007/s00114-011-0842-8).
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L to R: Lauren Guillette, Allison Hahn and Marcia Spetch at CO3 banquet
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