The diversity of social life on earth is Columbia University professor Dustin Rubenstein’s field of interest. Building on his doctorate from Cornell in neurobiology, his research takes an integrative approach to understanding the evolution of complex breeding systems in vertebrates and invertebrates. As a behavioral and evolutionary biologist, Rubenstein has been studying how physiological and individual level processes contribute to larger scale phenomena. What are the costs and benefits of different reproductive strategies, particularly the causes and consequences of sociality? Using one of the more bizarre groups of social organisms, the sponge-dwelling snapping shrimp, he will detail the range of social systems that all animals exhibit, discussing why animals form social groups in the first place and emphasizing the role that environmental uncertainty plays in driving social evolution. Finally, he will talk more broadly about how understanding the importance of environmental uncertainty is key to determining how organisms everywhere — social and otherwise — might cope with climate change.
