About

I am a primate behavioral ecologist broadly interested in understanding the evolution of social complexity from an energetic perspective. This emphasis extends research on the evolution of group living by analyzing behavioral interactions at the both the individual level and the group level. My current work focuses primarily on understanding how competition within and between groups shapes behavior and the consequences of intraspecific landscape partitioning and resource competition. I’m also developing new research directions that will examine how group-level processes affect individual fitness outcomes and how individual relationships influence group-level dynamics.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Ecology
• Biology
• Geography
• Artificial Intelligence
• Environmental science
• Data Mining
• Mathematics
• Statistics
• Econometrics
• Data science

Selected publications

• Energetic costs of social dominance in wild male baboons

  Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2025-01-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  In vertebrates, glucocorticoids can be upregulated in response to both psychosocial and energetic stressors, making it difficult to identify the cause of elevated glucocorticoid concentrations when both types of stressors are present. This problem has been particularly challenging in studies of social dominance rank in wild animals. In contrast to glucocorticoids, thyroid hormone concentrations are largely unaffected by psychosocial stressors and therefore offer a better estimate of energetic challenges. Here, we measured faecal metabolites of both triiodothyronine (mT3) and glucocorticoids (fGC) in wild baboons and assessed how these hormonal profiles vary with male dominance rank. We found that alpha males have lower mT3 and higher fGC than males of other ranks, indicating sustained energetic costs of alpha status. By contrast, low-ranking males have higher mT3 but similar fGC concentrations than non-alpha high-ranking males, reflecting their lower exposure to energetic stressors but greater vulnerability to psychosocial stressors than higher-ranking males. We also found that mate-guarding of fertile females, a behaviour expressed at higher rates by alpha males, partly explains the energetic costs of high social status. These findings offer evidence of the different types of costs experienced by low- and high-ranking animals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Building Resilience: Forest Resources Shape Rural Housing Security in Madagascar

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• High early lactational synchrony within baboon groups predicts increased female-female competition and infant mortality

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2024-09-11 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract In species where multiple breeding females co-reside in a social group, female-female competition may be particularly acute when many females have dependent young at the same time, with potential negative consequences for offspring survival. Here, we used more than four decades of data on wild baboons ( Papio sp.) in Amboseli, Kenya, to examine the effects of ‘early lactational synchrony’ (the proportion of females in a group with an infant <90 days old) on female-female agonistic interactions and infant survival. Because early lactation is energetically demanding for mothers and high-risk for infants, we expected both female-female aggression and protection by males to intensify during this period. In support, when early lactational synchrony was high, rates of female-female agonism increased. High-ranking females increased their time associating with adult males, while the time that low-ranking females associated with adult males decreased. Furthermore, high early lactational synchrony strongly predicted infant mortality, even though periods of high synchrony tended to be brief in duration in this nonseasonally breeding population. This association may result from both aggression among adult females and infanticidal behavior by peripubertal females. These findings provide novel evidence that synchronous reproduction alters competitive regimes and compromises reproductive outcomes even in nonseasonal breeders.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Provisioning services decline for both people and Critically Endangered wildlife in a rainforest transformation landscape

  People and Nature · 2024-02-29 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The loss and degradation of forests and other ecosystems worldwide threaten both global biodiversity and the livelihoods of people who use natural resources. Understanding how natural resource use impacts landscape provisioning services for both people and wildlife is thus critical for designing comprehensive resource management strategies. We used data from community focus groups, botanical plots and an inventory of plant species consumed by the Critically Endangered red‐ruffed lemur ( Varecia rubra ) to assess the availability of key provisioning services for people and endemic wildlife on the Masoala Peninsula, a rainforest transformation landscape, in northeastern Madagascar (Masoala National Park and 13 surrounding communities). We constructed Poisson regression mixed models to evaluate the impact of community factors (i.e. community population size, plot distance to community) and changes over time on the count and species richness of timber trees, medicinal plants and red‐ruffed lemur food trees within botanical plots. Over three‐quarters of all plant species could be used for at least one purpose by local communities ( n = 238 species). Of the 59 V. rubra food tree species, only 15% had no reported human use. Timber and ruffed lemur food tree availability declined both with community population size and time and were predicted to be lower outside of Masoala National Park. In contrast, medicinal plant availability was not strongly predicted by any tested factors. Provisioning service availability also differed strongly across sites, suggesting that additional, untested proxies of human pressure likely also have an effect. Our results highlight the importance of evaluating natural resource availability from a community‐based perspective and by resource purpose to inform forest landscape restoration efforts that can support both people and wildlife. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Thyroid hormone concentrations in female baboons: Metabolic consequences of living in a highly seasonal environment

  Hormones and Behavior · 2024-02-15 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• kj-kling/Kling-etal-People-Nature: Kling et al, P&N Resubmission

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2023-05-16

  datasetOpen access

  This repository contains the (1) code, (2) results output, and (3) datasets used for a paper entitled "Provisioning services decline for both people and Critically Endangered wildlife in a rainforest transformation landscape."

  PublisherDOI

• kj-kling/Kling-etal-People-Nature: Code, Results Outputs, & Datasets

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2023-11-06

  datasetOpen access

  This repository contains the (1) code, (2) results output, and (3) datasets used for a paper entitled "Provisioning services decline for both people and Critically Endangered wildlife in a rainforest transformation landscape." This was a pre-release version and has since been updated (vpub.1.0.0) Update includes calculation of marginal & conditional R2GLMM values for each model in analysis (in R markdown files) and expanded list of scientific names for study plant assemblage (in Appendix S1).

  PublisherDOI

• Evaluating expert‐based habitat suitability information of terrestrial mammals with <scp>GPS‐</scp>tracking data

  Global Ecology and Biogeography · 2022 · 17 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Ecology
  • Geography

  Aim: Macroecological studies that require habitat suitability data for many species often derive this information from expert opinion. However, expert-based information is inherently subjective and thus prone to errors. The increasing availability of GPS tracking data offers opportunities to evaluate and supplement expert-based information with detailed empirical evidence. Here, we compared expert-based habitat suitability information from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with habitat suitability information derived from GPS-tracking data of 1,498 individuals from 49 mammal species. Location: Worldwide. Time period: 1998-2021. Major taxa studied: Forty-nine terrestrial mammal species. Methods: Using GPS data, we estimated two measures of habitat suitability for each individual animal: proportional habitat use (proportion of GPS locations within a habitat type), and selection ratio (habitat use relative to its availability). For each individual we then evaluated whether the GPS-based habitat suitability measures were in agreement with the IUCN data. To that end, we calculated the probability that the ranking of empirical habitat suitability measures was in agreement with IUCN's classification into suitable, marginal and unsuitable habitat types. Results: IUCN habitat suitability data were in accordance with the GPS data (> 95% probability of agreement) for 33 out of 49 species based on proportional habitat use estimates and for 25 out of 49 species based on selection ratios. In addition, 37 and 34 species had a > 50% probability of agreement based on proportional habitat use and selection ratios, respectively. Main conclusions: We show how GPS-tracking data can be used to evaluate IUCN habitat suitability data. Our findings indicate that for the majority of species included in this study, it is appropriate to use IUCN habitat suitability data in macroecological studies. Furthermore, we show that GPS-tracking data can be used to identify and prioritize species and habitat types for re-evaluation of IUCN habitat suitability data.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Clarifying space use concepts in ecology: range vs. occurrence distributions

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2022 · 33 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Data Mining
  • Artificial Intelligence

  Abstract Quantifying animal movements is necessary for answering a wide array of research questions in ecology and conservation biology. Consequently, ecologists have made considerable efforts to identify the best way to estimate an animal’s home range, and many methods of estimating home ranges have arisen over the past half century. Most of these methods fall into two distinct categories of estimators that have only recently been described in statistical detail: those that measure range distributions (methods such as Kernel Density Estimation that quantify the long-run behavior of a movement process that features restricted space use) and those that measure occurrence distributions (methods such as Brownian Bridge Movement Models and the Correlated Random Walk Library that quantify uncertainty in an animal movement path during a specific period of observation). In this paper, we use theory, simulations, and empirical analysis to demonstrate the importance of applying these two classes of space use estimators appropriately and distinctly. Conflating range and occurrence distributions can have serious consequences for ecological inference and conservation practice. For example, in most situations, home-range estimates quantified using occurrence estimators are too small, and this problem is exacerbated by ongoing improvements in tracking technology that enable more frequent and more accurate data on animal movements. We encourage researchers to use range estimators to estimate the area of home ranges and occurrence estimators to answer other questions in movement ecology, such as when and where an animal crosses a linear feature, visits a location of interest, or interacts with other animals. Open Research Statement Tracking data on Aepyceros melampus, Beatragus hunteri, Bycanistes bucinator, Cerdocyon thous, Eulemur rufifrons, Glyptemys insculpta, Gyps coprotheres, Madoqua guentheri, Ovis canadensis, Propithecus verreauxi, Sus scrofa , and Ursus arctos are publicly archived in the Dryad repository (Noonan et al. 2018; https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v5051j2 ), as are data from Procapra gutturosa (Fleming et al. 2014a; https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.45157 ). Data on Panthera onca were taken from (Morato et al. 2018). Additional data are publicly archived in the Movebank repository under the following identifiers: Canis latrans , 8159699; Canis lupus , 8159399; Chrysocyon brachyurus , 18156143; Felis silvestris , 40386102; Gyps africanus , 2919708; Lepus europaeus , 25727477; Martes pennanti , 2964494; Panthera leo , 220229; Papio cynocephalus , 222027; Syncerus caffer , 1764627; Tapirus terrestris , 443607536; Torgos tracheliotus , 2919708; and Ursus americanus , 8170674.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Effects of body size on estimation of mammalian area requirements

  Conservation Biology · 2020 · 97 citations

  • Statistics
  • Ecology
  • Environmental science

  Accurately quantifying species' area requirements is a prerequisite for effective area-based conservation. This typically involves collecting tracking data on species of interest and then conducting home-range analyses. Problematically, autocorrelation in tracking data can result in space needs being severely underestimated. Based on the previous work, we hypothesized the magnitude of underestimation varies with body mass, a relationship that could have serious conservation implications. To evaluate this hypothesis for terrestrial mammals, we estimated home-range areas with global positioning system (GPS) locations from 757 individuals across 61 globally distributed mammalian species with body masses ranging from 0.4 to 4000 kg. We then applied block cross-validation to quantify bias in empirical home-range estimates. Area requirements of mammals <10 kg were underestimated by a mean approximately15%, and species weighing approximately100 kg were underestimated by approximately50% on average. Thus, we found area estimation was subject to autocorrelation-induced bias that was worse for large species. Combined with the fact that extinction risk increases as body mass increases, the allometric scaling of bias we observed suggests the most threatened species are also likely to be those with the least accurate home-range estimates. As a correction, we tested whether data thinning or autocorrelation-informed home-range estimation minimized the scaling effect of autocorrelation on area estimates. Data thinning required an approximately93% data loss to achieve statistical independence with 95% confidence and was, therefore, not a viable solution. In contrast, autocorrelation-informed home-range estimation resulted in consistently accurate estimates irrespective of mass. When relating body mass to home range size, we detected that correcting for autocorrelation resulted in a scaling exponent significantly >1, meaning the scaling of the relationship changed substantially at the upper end of the mass spectrum.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Susan C. Alberts

  Duke University

  21 shared

• Bryan D. Watts

  William & Mary

  21 shared

• Jeanne Altmann

  19 shared

• Scott LaPoint

  Black Rock Forest Consortium

  14 shared

• Thomas Mueller

  14 shared

• Justin M. Calabrese

  Center for Advanced Systems Understanding

  12 shared

• Christen H. Fleming

  University of Central Florida

  12 shared

• Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf

  Emory University

  12 shared

Education

• MA, Biology Department

  The College of William and Mary

• PhD, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

  Princeton University