Dr. Eli Strauss

Postdoctoral Researcher

BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action

👇Watch juvenile spotted hyenas acquire their ranks👇

Figure from my talk at #BehavEcol2018. Props to @Eliz_Hobson for inventing the attribute ordered network (left); great for plotting aggression and dominance (tutorial on her site https://t.co/xEkiVbLfSn) @MSUHyenas #rstats pic.twitter.com/pgMRHSX17d
— Eli Strauss (@_straussed) August 14, 2018

I am a behavioral ecologist interested in the ecology and evolution of complex social systems. One particularly striking and widespread feature of social systems is that, across species, societies are structured by dominance hierarchies. These structures mediate conflict within groups, but also often lead to persistent inequality among group members in access to resources, social partners, and reproductive success. I’m interested in understanding why these structures are s so prevalent across species, what causes changes in social hierarchies, and how inequality influences the ecology and evolution of social organisms. For my PhD, I studied the dynamics and stability of dominance hierarchies in spotted hyenas across scales, from the dynamic emergence of structured hierarchy among juveniles to the intergenerational patterns in dominance that lead to dynastic societies. Since completing my PhD in 2019, I continue to remain an active member of the long-term Mara Hyena Project, but I’m also increasingly focused on using comparative methods to identify patterns in social structure across systems. My current research is aimed at implementing a comparative framework to understand the socioecology, structure, and dynamics of inequality across species. I am passionate about the importance of field work and organism-focused research programs, the proliferation and advancement of quantitative tools in evolution and ecology, and the value of long-term research. I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher affiliated with the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action at Michigan State University.

> eli
$interests
[1] "dominance hierarchies"                  "social network analysis"            
[3] "collective behavior"                 "quantitative methods in behavioral ecology"
[5] "social evolution"                    "cooking"                            

$skills
[1] "R"                       "SQL"                     "social network analysis"
[4] "statistics"              "field data collection"   "banjo"                  

$familiar_with
[1] "python"                     "c++"                       
[3] "git"                        "agent-based modeling"      
[5] "high-performance computing" "running"

Featured Article

Social alliances improve rank and fitness in convention-based societies

What forces produce and maintain social inequality, and why do society members tolerate this inequality? The “One Percent” clearly benefit from having high status, but low-status individuals have strong incentive to challenge the established pecking order and try to improve their position. This conundrum is particularly striking in the societies of many primates and spotted hyenas, where females who are born to low-status mothers rarely manage to improve their position. Here we find that females who are strongly allied with their group-mates are more likely to improve their status, and that upward social mobility is often achieved with support from their closest allies. This suggests that, much like some animals compete physically for status, these species compete through social alliances.

Eli D. Strauss, Kay E. Holekamp

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

PDF Journal

Recent Publications

For a full list of my publications, see my CV

Strauss ED, Shizuka D, Holekamp KE (in review). Juvenile rank acquisition predicts fitness independent of adult rank. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B.

Green DS, Farr M, Holekamp KE, Strauss ED, Zipkin E. (2019) Can hyena behavior predict abundances of sympatric carnivores? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B. doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0052

Strauss ED, Holekamp KE. (2019) Social alliances improve rank and fitness in convention-based societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116:8919-8924. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810384116

Strauss ED, Holekamp KE. (2019) Inferring longitudinal hierarchies: Framework and methods for studying the dynamics of dominance. Journal of Animal Ecology, 88:521-536. doi.org/10.¹¹¹¹⁄₁₃₆₅-2656.12951

Smith JE, Lehmann KDS, Montgomery TM, Strauss ED, Holekamp KE. (2017) Insights from long-term field studies of mammalian carnivores. Journal of Mammalogy, 98:631-641. doi:10.1093/jmammal/gyw194.

Holekamp KE, Strauss ED. (2016) Aggression and dominance: An interdisciplinary overview. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 12:44-51. doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2016.08.005

Jones SC, Strauss ED, Holekamp KE. (2015) Ecology of African Carrion. Pp. 459-489 in Carrion Ecology, Evolution, and Their Applications. Benbow ME, Tomberlin JK, Tarone AM (Eds). CRC Press. Boca Raton, FL.