More About Me
The broad theme of my research is social behavior on changing landscapes. I use a complex adaptive systems approach in my research, leveraging long-term datasets and social network analysis to tease apart the different factors underlying different types of social network structure and to ask questions such as:
I am currently a NSF postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Shermin de Silva's HumaNature Lab at the University of California San Diego. I am using long-term social observations of Asian elephant populations in Sri Lanka to investigate how social structure and organization change in response to habitat loss and changing rates of population turnover. My work with Dr. de Silva aims to inform conservation policy impacting this endangered species and impacting social species of conservation concern more broadly. We previously published a paper about the differences in protected area use by elephants of different sex, age, and behavioral state that aimed to support the protection of an important wildlife corridor that connects two national parks in Sri Lanka (Madsen et al. 2022).
- How do social interactions change in response to different types of social and environmental disturbances?
- What are the thresholds for states of stability and change in social networks?
- What social factors lead populations to thrive and which lead populations to decline amidst changing conditions?
I am currently a NSF postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Shermin de Silva's HumaNature Lab at the University of California San Diego. I am using long-term social observations of Asian elephant populations in Sri Lanka to investigate how social structure and organization change in response to habitat loss and changing rates of population turnover. My work with Dr. de Silva aims to inform conservation policy impacting this endangered species and impacting social species of conservation concern more broadly. We previously published a paper about the differences in protected area use by elephants of different sex, age, and behavioral state that aimed to support the protection of an important wildlife corridor that connects two national parks in Sri Lanka (Madsen et al. 2022).
I earned my PhD in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), co-advised by Dr. Shizuka and Dr. Jeffrey Stevens. I was supported by a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT), which provided a foundation in resilience and complexity theory in social-ecological systems. My PhD research used long-term data from a wild population of golden-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia atricapilla) in Santa Cruz, California to study how social structure interacted with space use, demographic processes, and social information. I found that social fidelity can drive fine-scale spatial fidelity (Madsen et al. 2023), social structure is driven by the heterogenous patterns of interactions of new recruits and returning birds (Madsen et al. preprint), social communities can persist for multiple years despite high annual turnover (Madsen et al. preprint), and socially learned behaviors can persist in migratory populations.
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Prior to accepting a PhD position at UNL, I worked for Dr. Shizuka managing an RFID bird feeder project at the Pioneers Park Nature Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. This ongoing project uses feeders outfitted with RFID antennas and data loggers (pictured left) to study the winter ecology of birds that participate in mixed-species flocks. I built a weather station controlled by an Arduino Uno to collect fine-scale weather data on-site in conjunction with the RFID feeders. We investigated whether birds with similar foraging activity are more connected in a social network, and asked which had a stronger effect: physiological factors or social connections. Interestingly, social relationships had stronger apparent effects on foraging behavior than low overnight temperatures (Madsen et al. 2021).
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In my spare time, I cater to my creative side by developing tasty recipes, honing my artistic skills, reading sci-fi, and belting show tunes. Below are my final illustration pieces from a Science Illustration course I took at UNL and wildlife photos from my recent visit to Sri Lanka!