Jack Hendrix

Ph.D. Candidate

How do animals make decisions, and how are these decisions influenced by the other organisms around them? I’ve long been fascinated by animal behaviour and social interactions – especially in contexts where it seems like animals are behaving antisocially. I joined the lab as a PhD student in 2019 after completing my MSc at the University of Guelph on the Kluane Red Squirrel Project. Red squirrels are extremely territorial and aggressive to one another, and yet I found that the identity of familiar neighbours had notable effects on their behaviour and fitness. I’ve continued to investigate the consequences of social relationships, even when individuals appear to be totally solitary. My PhD on woodland caribou in Newfoundland, particularly on Fogo Island, is focused on behavioural plasticity in caribou and how they interact with their environment. Woodland caribou deliberately space out from one another during calving, but I found that caribou still selected familiar social environments when deciding where to give birth. In addition to the social environment, I’m also interested in seasonal changes on the landscape and spatial differences in forage quality and quantity across habitats. I use a combination of remotely-sensed data, accelerometry, direct ethological observations, and vegetation sampling to study caribou behaviour and what sources of information they’re using to make behavioural decisions.