Kaia Tombak

Dr. Kaia Tombak studies the evolutionary forces that shape animal societies. She has studied how egalitarianism is maintained among female red colobus monkeys in Uganda, how zebras with two social systems expand and contract their groups in response to the same selection forces in Kenya, and how nutritional regulation strategies mediate food competition regimes and impact social tolerance among the great apes. Sexual selection theory looms large in the study of social behaviour in mammals in particular, but she and her colleagues have discovered evidence for multiple contradictions to its predictions, inspiring a new branch of her research focused on the social biases that shape how related questions are framed in evolutionary biology.