My research revolves around the central theme of social complexity in birds and mammals, which I have studied from many different angles including behavior, cognition, acoustics, and physiology. I have further used quantitative genetics to disentangle environmental, parental and genetic sources of variation in social behavior. In recent years, my focus has been on chemical communication in various species of primates and cooperatively breeding mammals such as meerkats and mole-rats. I am particularly interested in assessing the social information content of animal scents, which I study using behavioural tests (so-called bioassays) and gas chromatography – mass spectrometry. In this context I also optimize and evaluate different sampling methods to allow non-invasive collection of animal scents in the field, and systematically assess the suitability and power of different statistical approaches for analyzing the highly complex, multi-dimensional chemical profiles.