Chris Young

Before joining NTU as a senior lecturer I was a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany where I researched the evolution of social behaviour in apes. Before that I was a senior post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, where he researched the links between endocrinology and social behaviour. I was also a post-doctoral fellow at the University of South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa, where my research focused in the thermal competence and social behaviour of non-human primates under extreme conditions. I gained my Ph.D in biology from the University of Göttingen, Germany and also hold a MRes in Primatology from the Univserity of Roehampton and a BSc (Hons) in Zoology from the Univserity of Edinburgh.

My primary research interest is in the evolution of sociality and the links between social behaviour, endocrinology and fitness. I study a range of non-human primates in order to understand the adaptive benefits of social behaviour at the individual, group and population level within and between species. I combine behavioural, genetic and endocrine methodology with multivariate Bayesian statistics to understand the physiological and behavioural costs and benefits of group living and how ecological and cognitive factors shape social behaviour in group-living animals.

The research covers a range of topics including:

Animal Behaviour
Behavioural ecology
Endocrinology
Individual differences
Social behaviour
Stress physiology
I am also a member of the Evolution and Social Interaction Research Group.