The Goldshtein Lab studies the behavioral and sensory ecology of wild bats, from acoustic cognitive maps and collective navigation to sleep and vigilance in the wild. We combine fieldwork, biologging, and AI-driven monitoring to understand animal cognition, in the environments where it evolved.
Our lab seeks to understand how animals perceive their surroundings, make decisions in natural environments, and translate those decisions into actions at both the individual and collective levels. Using bats as a model system, we investigate these processes across key behaviors, including navigation, foraging, and roosting, through the lens of behavioral and sensory ecology. Using long-term, multimodal monitoring systems for wild bat populations, we examine how decision-making emerges and changes across ecological contexts, social environments, and life-history stages. Ultimately, we aim to uncover how these processes shape individual fitness, collective behavior, and the capacity of populations and species to respond to environmental change.
Aya earned her PhD at Tel Aviv University and was a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz. Her work on bat cognition and navigation has been published in Science, PNAS, and Current Biology, and covered by outlets including The New York Times and National Geographic.
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