Marta Manser is a Professor at the Institue of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich. She is interested in understanding animal societies and investigate sproximate and functional aspects on group coordination (leadership and group decisions) and in particular, communication and cognition in mammals. With a comparative approach she aims to identify what selective factors favor communicative complexity (e.g., vocal repertoire size, variation in call structure within call types, call combinations, etc…) and the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Her work focuses on phylogenetic closely related or sympatric living species showing variation in their social structure. Based on behavioural observations of habituated animals in their natural habitat she tests specific hypotheses with field experiments, and also on captiveanimals.