Professor Michael Cant

About me:

I am an evolutionary biologist interested in how cooperation and conflict shape social life across the natural world. Much of my work is motivated by the idea that living systems are built from cooperative teams - genes, cells, individuals, and social groups - whose behaviour and evolution is shaped, at least in part, by some universal principles which can be uncovered through theory and experiment. I try to understand these principles by studying cooperative animal societes, from wasps and termites to cooperative mammals such as mongooses and killer whales. I hope to understand why social behaviour - such as aggression and altruism - varies so much between individuals and over time, and how different types of animal society, including human societies, evolved.

One of my main study animals is the banded mongoose, a highly social species that lives in groups of about twenty adults plus offspring, and occurs across much of East and southern Africa. I started a long-term study of wild banded mongooses in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, for my PhD research, and the population has been studied continuously since then. Together with Francis Mwanguhya and his field team, we follow numerous groups of mongooses, tracking individual behaviour and life history from birth to death, measuing growth and social development, reproductive success, patterns of cooperation and conflict, and aging processes. I have used this system to investigate reproductive competition, collective action, transgenerational effects, warfare, and the cognitive capacities that make cooperation possible.

I also work on other cooperative systems. With Faye Thompson I study intergroup conflict in dampwood termites, using our laboratory population of around 700 colonies; with Darren Croft I work on a long-term dataset of resident killer whales in the northeast Pacific, and with Jeremy Field I study social behaviour in paper wasps in southern Spain. My main theoretical collaborator is Rufus Johnstone, with whom I have developed models of competition, helping, and life-history evolution in animals societies, including humans. One major focus of our work has been to understand why humans, and a handful of whale species, have evolved menopause. 

Over the years I have been fortunate to receive continuous funding for my research, including ERC Advanced and Consolidator Grants and a series of grants from NERC, the Royal Society, the Leverhulme Trust, and the German Research Foundation. I have also benefited from opportunities to work with outstanding colleagues internationally, including during a Humboldt Research Award held at the German Primate Center at Goettingen University and a Fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. I currently supervise a dynamic group of researchers and students working on cooperation, intergroup conflict, ageing, and social development.

I am a member of the Behaviour research group, and the Human Biological and Cultural Evolution Group. For publications, videos and further information on my research see my group website here.

Book: The Evolution of Social Behaviour by Michael Taborsky, Michael Cant, and Jan Komdeur. Cambridge University Press

Media: 2021. Michael Cant and Patrick Green gave a joint Long Term Animal Research Seminar on warfare, mongooses, and group adaptation. 2019. Watch Michael talk about 'Kinship Dynamics and the Evolution of Social Life Histories' at the Zoo and Wildlife Research Symposium, Berln Oct 2019 (starts 1h:16). Listen to Michael on Radio 4's The Human Hive; or to his audio diary from Uganda on NERC's Planet Earth website (starts 2:45). Read about his recent research on why only humans and two species of whale have evolved menopause; how banded mongoose 'escorts' pass on foraging traditions to the offspring in their care; and the conflicts that lie beneath the surface of apparently cooperative animal societies.

Career

2024 ERC Advanced Grant
2022 Humboldt Research Award, Germany
2021 Leverhulme International Fellowship, University of Goettingen, Germany
2020 Wiko Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, Germany
2015 Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award
2013 ERC Consolidator Grant
2013 Professor of Evolutionary Biology
2011 Associate Professor
2007 Royal Society University Research Fellow, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus
2003 Royal Society University Research Fellow, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge
2001 Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellow. Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, New York, USA
1999 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Biology, University College London

Qualifications:

1999 PhD, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge. Supervisor Prof T H Clutton-Brock

1994 Postgraduate Certificate in Biotechnology Training, University of Leicester. Supervisor Prof T Burke

1993 BSc(Hons) Zoology 1st Class, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne