Data Science
Shinnosuke Nakayama

Curbing illegal fishing

Fisheries play a vital role in global food security and the livelihoods and well-being of coastal populations worldwide. However, each year, more than 20% of catch is lost to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, threatening communities' food security and livelihoods. I am working on illuminating pathways for action to reduce IUU fishing and its impact at local and global scales toward securing the environmental and social sustainability of crucial marine resources.

Behavioral plasticity in humans

Humans are an extremely social animal, but little is known about how we adapt behavior to different social contexts toward maximizing group performance. How do we change our leadership and followership in response to others? How do we spontaneously balance divison of labor? I study behavioral plasticity in humans through virtual collaborative tasks and computer-programmed social agents.

Behavior and life-history variation

Consistent individual differences in behavior are proposed to entail ecological and evolutionary consequences, but less is known in the wild. Using a fine-scale, long-term, whole-lake acoustic telemetry, I study individual differences in movement traits of free-ranging fish in response to environmental change and its correlation to life-history traits.

Leadership and followership

How does a group of animals make a collective decision when each member has a different opinion? What rules have been selected over the evolutionary time? Do some members have heavier weights on the vote than others? I study this intriguing question using pairs of stickleback fish.