My education and background is mainly in biology, namely ecology and evolution. I completed my Master’s with thesis in Biology in 2019, where I studied the evolution of animal behaviour, evolutionary genetics, and ecology with special topics in ecological climatology. I applied these concepts in my Master’s thesis where I took an interdisciplinary approach to try and understand how the environment, parasitism, and sociality may influence the development of specialized brain regions in a eusocial wasp. I began my PhD in Psychology in 2019, where I expanded on this approach and applied it to the field of animal welfare, incorporating concepts from my previous disciplines and psychology. The goal of my research is to take a broad and interdisciplinary perspective when understanding animal behaviour by understanding the evolutionary basis for behaviour and looking at animals as an extension of the environments in which they live so that this information can be applied to promote positive welfare for captive animals. I will soon graduate from my PhD having published two papers on circadian rhythms and the implications and importance of accounting for them in captive environments. I plan to continue my work exploring the adaptive qualities of circadian rhythms across species, and hope to apply this knowledge to improve animal welfare practices across the globe.
To go to Dr Kristine Gandia’s tool click here.