Mathilde Martin, PhD
Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zürich
Animal behaviour – Acoustic communication –
Social interactions
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My research focuses on acoustic communication in group-living terrestrial and marine mammals. I am interested in deciphering how vocal signals modulate social interactions, in relation to the species’ ecological constraints for acoustic communication. My approach combines the analysis of acoustic signals and experiments such as playbacks.
I was recently awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fyssen Foundation to join the ‘Communication and Cognition in Social Mammals’ research group at the University of Zürich. My postdoc project aims to investigate how meerkats close calls help maintain group cohesion during foraging.
During my PhD, I studied the acoustic communication network in the Cape fur seal. I was interested in describing the species’ vocal repertoire, evaluating the degree of individuality in the vocalisations and investigating individual vocal recognition at several levels of the network. I also assessed the impact of anthropogenic noise on the behaviour of Cape fur seals at different study sites in Namibia and South Africa. For more information see here.
