Research Area	Animal behaviour, Behavioral ecology, Primatology
Lab Website	Lab Website
Google Scholar	Google Scholar
ResearchMap	https://researchmap.jp/nobuyuki_kutsukake
E-mail	kutsu (at) soken.ac.jp

The observation of animals leads us to a number of questions such as "How do animals live?", "Why do animals behave in a certain way?", "What do animals know and understand?", and "Why are there so many species?" A goal of my studies is to understand animal behavior and ecology from a standpoint of evolution. I have two ongoing projects. The first one is on social evolution in group-living mammals. I want to know how individuals should behave in order to maximize their (inclusive) fitness in a complex social environment. So far, I have been working on cooperation, conflict, conflict resolution, and communication in mammals and other vertebrates. The second one is on phenotypic evolution and comparative approaches. I am applying a new computational framework of phylogenetic comparative analyses to complex and heterogeneous data to infer processes of trait evolution.

Selected Publications, Books etc.

• 1.Nomano FY, Kutsukake N. (2022) Aggression induced by ornament similarity is limited to females in a mutually ornamented fish, Betta brownorum. Animal Behaviour 190:233-240.
• 2.Sekizawa M, Kutsukake N. (2022) Pattern, function, and constraint of infant handling in wild Japanese macaques. Ethology 128:412-423.
• 3.Harano T, Kutsukake N. (2022) Way to big cats: directional selection in body size evolution in living felids. Journal of Mammalian Evolution 30:1-12.
• 4.Iki S, Kutsukake N. (2021) Japanese macaques relax vigilance when surrounded by kin. Animal Behaviour 179:173-181.
• 5.Hasegawa M, Kutsukake N. (2019) Kin selection and reproductive value in social mammals. Journal of Ethology 37:139-150.