Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Macroecology and Macroevolution Lab in Macquarie University
PhD | The University of Queensland, Vera Weisbecker's Morphological Evo-Devo Group & Simone Blomberg Evo-Bio Group
MRes | Groningen University, Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience : Animal and Human Behaviour
I have a broad interest in evolutionary biology, and more specifically in neuroecology, comparative neuroanatomy and animal behaviour and cognition. My background is in Cognitive Science and Animal Behaviour and currently I am interested in phylogenetic comparative methods and their application in topics related to phenotypic evolution, with emphasise on brains and behaviour.Projects
Carnivoran extinction
With John Alroy (Macquarie University
Assessing the impact of Holocene extinction on carnivoran diversity
Mammalian Brain Evolution
My PhD project addressed the evolution of brain size variation in three clades of mammals – primates, marsupials and lagomorphs – and at different scale of inquiry – whole brains, brain lobes, and sub-regions of brain areas.
Primate Brain Evolution
With Simon Reader at Utrecht University
Investigating some aspects of the evolution of the prefrontal brain areas in primates.
Where am I, Who am I?
With Michael Proulx, Amanda Taylor Aiken and Alexandra de Sousa
Scrutinising the relation between spatial cognition, social cognition and individual differences in the built environment from evolutionary perspective.
With Marty Sereno and Alexandra de Sousa at Birkbeck College, UCL
Research assistant collecting data on a project elucidating how glass in contemporary architecture shapes perception, action and social behaviour.
Singing in Hard Foraging Conditions
With Simon Verhulst (Groningen) and Katharina Riebel (Leiden)
How developmental foraging conditions shape zebra finch's song quality and preference - a culturally transmitted trait.
Publications
de Sousa, A. A., Todorov, O. S., & Proulx, M. J. (2022). A natural history of vision loss: Insight from evolution for human visual function. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 134, 104550.
Todorov Orlin S., Blomberg Simone P., Goswami Anjali, Sears Karen, Drhlík Patrik, Peters James and Weisbecker Vera (2021) Testing hypotheses of marsupial brain size variation using phylogenetic multiple imputations and a Bayesian comparative framework Proc. R. Soc. B.2882021039420210394
Proulx, M. J., Brown, D. J., Lloyd-Esenkaya, T., Leveson, J. B., Todorov, O. S., Watson, S. H., & de Sousa, A. A. (2020). Visual-to-auditory sensory substitution alters language asymmetry in both sighted novices and experienced visually impaired users. Applied ergonomics, 85, 103072.
Milham, M., Petkov, C. I., Margulies, D. S., Schroeder, C. E., Basso, M. A., Belin, P., Todorov, OS, ... & Zarco, W. (2020). Accelerating the evolution of nonhuman primate neuroimaging. Neuron, 105(4), 600-603.
Todorov, O. S., Weisbecker, V., Gilissen, E., Zilles, K., & de Sousa, A. A. (2019). Primate hippocampus size and organization are predicted by sociality but not diet. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286(1914), 20191712.
Todorov O.S., de Sousa A.A. (2018) Evolution of the Occipital Lobe. In: Bruner E., Ogihara N., Tanabe H. (eds) Digital Endocasts. Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series. Springer, Tokyo
Proulx MJ, Todorov OS, Taylor Aiken A and de Sousa AA (2016) Where am I? Who am I? The Relation Between Spatial Cognition, Social Cognition and Individual Differences in the Built Environment. Front. Psychol. 7:64. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00064
Recent conference attendances
2021
Evolution of the mammalian brain: Using phylogenetic comparative methods to study brain evolution in three mammalian cladesFrom Fossil To Mind Workshop organised by South African Neuroscience Society, Cape Town, SA
2020Is human brain organisation economical
and
Primate hippocampal size and organisation are predicted by sociality but not diet
89th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA)
2018
The cellular structure of mammalian cognition: Comparative neuronal morphology of the marsupial brain
64th annual meeting of the Australian Mammals Society, Brisbane, Australia2017
The social brain hypothesis and the hippocampus
7th Annual European Society for the Study of Human Evolution, Leiden, The Netherlands – with Anna van Oosterzee and Dr. Alexandra de Sousa2016
Laterality of sensory substitution
North Sea Laterality Meeting, Groningen, The NetherlandsInteresting Stuff
Tools and work related
Conference list (updated annually):
Ecology and evolution conferences 2021-2022 list
Reading and writing:
10 Quite Useful Tools for Academics
100 articles every ecologist should read from Nature Ecology & Evolution
Guide to Reproducible Code in Ecology and Evolution by British Ecological Society
The 5 pivotal paragraphs in a paper by Brian McGillHow to write a first-class paper - Nature
Interactive visualisations of some statistical tests
Evolutionary comparative methods:
CRAN Task View: Phylogenetics -Almost all R phylogenetics packages in one place!
Plotting methods for comparative data and phylogenies - by Liam Revell
Phytools Macroevolution Workshop 2018 - Course led by Liam Revell 26-29 June 2018
TimeTree - Generate phylogenetic trees based on thousands of published studies
10k Trees - Bayesian inference of primate, odd-toed and even-toed ungulates, carnivorans and cetaceans phylogeny
PhyloPic - Free silhouette images of animals, plants, and other life forms, available for reuseDatasets:
Phylogenies, range data, and trait data for 5,831 mammal species that lived since the last interglacial period from PHYLACINE 1.2
Brain size data for 1,552 mammal species (2019) from Burger et. al. 'The allometry of brain size in mammals'
Brain size, body mass, life-history traits and development mode for 620 bird species (2020) - Dante et al.
A dataset on the morphological, life-history and ecological traits of the mammals in China (2022)R
Packages:
Useful tools:
MICE - Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equations (pdf)
performance - Utilities for computing measures to assess model quality
interactions - analysis and exploration of statistical interactions in the context of regression
Naniar - plotting of missing values and examination of imputations
Phylogenetic comparative methods:
caper - Comparative analyses of phylogenetics and evolution in R (pdf)
evomap - Evolutionary mapping of continuous traits
MCMCglmm - MCMC Generalised Linear Mixed Models (pdf)
mulTree - Performs MCMCglmm On Multiple Phylogenetic Trees
phyloMICE - extension of MICE to include phylogenetic predictive means matching
phyloPath - Phylogenetic path analysis
phytools -Phylogenetic tools for comparative biology (and other things)
Rphylopars - Fast multivariate phylogenetic comparative methods for missing data and within‐species variation (pdf)
RRphylo - Phylogenetic Ridge Regression Methods for Comparative Studies (vignette)
sensiPhy - sensitivity analyses in phylogenetic comparative methods
SURFACE - Fitting Hansen models to investigate convergent evolution (pdf)
Visualisation:
Visual vocabulary - useful starting point for making informative and meaningful data visualisations
gt - Create beautiful tables within R
Joyplots/Ridgeline - Create Joy Division inspired plots
Rokemon - Create Gameboy/video game inspired ggplots
Wes Anderson - A Wes Anderson color palette for R
XKCD - Create XKCD comic styled plots
Free to use biology/biomedical images/icons: PhyloPic - Biorender - Smart Servier
Misc:
R Cheatsheets - Very useful free visual aid for R
A Compendium of Clean Graphs in R (and JASP)
Research networks, labs and institutes
Macroecology and Macroevolution, Macquarie University
Weisbecker's Morphological Evo Devo Lab - School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland
Smaers Lab - Macroevolutionary Anatomy Lab, Stony Brook UniversityQBI Histology and Microscopy - The University of Queensland
The Reader Lab - Innovation and Social Learning, McGill University
Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences
ENBER - European Network for Brain Evolution ResearchInfo and Misc
© 2017