Research Area

My current research interests focus on the cognitive and learning behaviors and how they evolved and influence the ecological adaptation in animals (mainly in birds). Animals are facing a lot of challenges in their environment. Having superior cognitive abilities is important for them to find food, avoid predator, deal with problems related to survival and reproduction. I am interested in whether animals share abilities that are considered to be higher-level cognitive capacities with us. Meanwhile, I am studying how cognitive performance influences the mating and reproductive strategy and social interaction in animals.

Contact Information

  E-mail: chenjiani@lzu.edu.cn

  Work address:

  Institute of Innovation Ecology, Room No. 110-A

  Lanzhou University

  No. 222 South Tianshui Road

  Lanzhou 730000, Gansu province

Education

2010.11-2014.10    Ph.D. (Behavior Biology), Leiden Unversity, Leiden, the Netherlands

2007.09-2010.07    M.Sc. (Zoology), Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

2003.09-2007.07    B.Sc.(Biotechnology), Hainan University, Haikou, China

Work Experience

  2019.08-present    Professor, Institute of Innovation Ecology, Lanzhou University, China

  2014.12-2019.08    Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

  Key Publications

*means corresponding author，^# means co-first author

  J. Chen, L. Chen, C. Yan, Z. Yu, Y. Zou, Y. H. Sun. Are cognition and personality related in budgerigars? Current Zoology, (2021).

  J. Chen, Y. Zou, Y-H. Sun, C. ten Cate. Problem-solving males become more attractive to female budgerigars. Science, 363(6423): 166-167 (2019).
  J. Chen, C. ten Cate. Bridging the gap: Learning of acoustic nonadjacent dependencies by a songbird. Journal of Experimental Psychology–Animal         Learning & Cognition, 43(3): 295-302 (2017).
  J. Chen, N. Jansen, C. ten Cate. Zebra finches are able to learn affixation-like patterns. Animal Cognition, 19(1): 65-73 (2016).
  J. Chen, D. van Rossum, C. ten Cate. Artificial grammar learning in zebra finches and human adults: XYX versus XXY. Animal Cognition, 18(1): 151-164   (2015).