MAURICIO CANTOR, PHD

Oi.

I am a biologist fascinated by emerging strategies in Nature. The overarching goal of my research is to formally link behavioural ecology to the ecology of interactions, both among individuals and among species, by combining theoretical models with empirical data. I am mostly interested in understanding how animal social systems emerge from simple rules among interacting individuals, and how selection acts on the individual sociality and the emergent collective social patterns. I primarily use cetaceans as research models due to their behavioural diversity, learning ability and social complexity—not to mention the exciting fieldwork challenges that come with studying them. My empirical work combines classical methods with emerging technologies for collecting and processing data; and relies on multiple statistical and modelling methods for analyzing the resulting large volume of data. My theoretical work has been inspired by sociobiology, complex systems and network theory to produce conceptual frameworks and in silico experiments in animal ecology. I do not limit myself to taxon-oriented research; instead I collaborate with many multidisciplinary international projects. My colleagues and I tackle questions on structure and function of a broad range of phenomena across multiple biological scales—molecule networks, individual ecological specialization, population and social dynamics of marine and terrestrial animals, aquatic food webs, and ecological interactions over biogeographic scales. My disciplines and areas of interest include: behavioural ecology, sociobiology, animal behaviour, behavioural evolution, cultural transmission, population ecology, community ecology, ecological networks, quantitative ecology, ecological modelling, and analyses of biological data.

Bio

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies at Max-Planck-Institut of Animal Behaviour, affiliated to the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour of the Department of Biology at the University Konstanz, Germany, and guest postdoctoral researcher the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. I am a volunteer postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Ecology and Zoology of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. I also volunteer as a non-tenured adjunct faculty in the Ecology graduate programme at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, and at the Coastal and Oceanic Systems graduate programme at the Universidade Federal do Paraná, and as an honorary researcher at the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. I have worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max-Planck-Institut of Animal Behaviour (2019), Centre for Marine Studies at the Universidade Federal do Paraná (2017-2018), and I have held a fixed-term Adjunct Lecturer position at the Centre for Biological Sciences, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2018). I received a PhD from the Department of Biology, Dalhousie University (Canada, Halifax, NS, 2016). I received my BSc/teaching degree in Biology at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil) in 2008, and my MSc degree in Ecology at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2011), during which I also collaborated as a voluntary researcher at the Aquatic Mammals Lab (LAMAq, UFSC, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil) and Instituto Baleia Jubarte (Caravelas, BA, Brazil).

Publications

Curriculum Vitae

Academic Record

Dr. Mauricio Cantor

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Departamento de Ecologia e Zoologia
Centro de Ciências Biológicas
Campus Universitário, Trindade Caixa Postal 5102
CEP 88040-970, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil
Phones: +55 (48) 3721-4737; +55 (48) 3721-7150
Email: m.cantor [at] ymail [dot] com