Fumiaki Nomano

I’m studying offspring care and its coordination in cooperative breeders. I’m also interested in mechanisms by which behaviours of ecological/social group as a whole emerges through behaviours of individual units in the group.

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Coordination, competition, and kinship in cooperative breeders

Cooperatively breeding groups in vertebrates contain breeders and non-breeding helpers, with the latter being either mature offspring delaying dispersal or non-kin. I base my research on theories of kin group formation to understand immigration and delayed dispersal. I study chestnut-crowned babblers showing unique social structure characterised by reduced territoriality. I also aim at understanding evolutionary mechanisms of allo-parental care by non-kin, and work coordination by multiple carers.

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Architecture and behaviour of stratified groups

Ecological groups (e.g. communities, guilds, and populations), and social groups (e.g. breeding pair/groups and wintering flocks) are the most intensively studied biological groups in the field of ecology and evolution. A question pertaining to both classes of groups is that whether simple local interactions among individual units can generate the group-level (global) structure and dynamics. I focus on relatively small communities and societies in which characteristics of individual units are likely to be important and tractable in the natural condition. I’m investigating social network architecture of breeding population of birds, and roles of synchrony of population dynamics among related drosophilid species in determining stability at the community level.

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Evolution and geographic distribution

I have worked on phylogeography of parasitoid wasps (Leptopilina, Asobara, and Ganaspis) in Asian region.

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