Dora Biro

Research Interests

My current research interests concern the mechanisms and consequences of social living and social organisation in animals. I work with two very different study systems, examining group decision-making and social learning in the context of navigation by homing pigeons, and the emergence and maintenance of culture among wild chimpanzees. The aim of this work is to understand, through a combination of empirical and mathematical modelling approaches, how social collectives are shaped by the individuals of which they are composed. My particular interests focus on how individuals with conflicting knowledge or preferences resolve their differences, and what information is exchanged between group members during socially-mediated learning – these are fundamental questions of group living. In addition, I also continue to undertake research on the role of vision in avian navigation (with collaborators in the departments of Zoology and Engineering Science at Oxford), developmental aspects of tool-using skills in wild chimpanzees, and symbolic and numerical cognition in captive chimpanzees (in collaboration with colleagues at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, Japan).

Contacts

Websites

• The Oxford Navigation Group

Selected Publications

• Biro, D., Freeman, R., Meade, J., Roberts, S.J., & Guilford, T. (2007). Pigeons combine compass and landmark guidance in familiar route navigation Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 104, 7471-7476
• Hockings, K.J., Humle, T., Anderson, J.R., Biro, D., Sousa, C., et al. (2007). Chimpanzees share forbidden fruit. PLoS ONE, 2: e886
• Biro, D., Sumpter, D.J.T., Meade, J., & Guilford T. (2006). From compromise to leadership in pigeon homing. Current Biology, 16, 2123-2128
• Biro, D., Meade, J., & Guilford, T. (2004). Familiar route loyalty implies visual pilotage in the homing pigeon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 101, 17440-17443
• Biro, D., Inoue-Nakamura, N., Tonooka, R., Yamakoshi, G., Sousa, C., & Matsuzawa, T. (2003). Cultural innovation and transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees: Evidence from field experiments. Animal Cognition, 6, 213-223