Profile

I like nature. I’m interested in how nature came to look the way it does to us – why do some animals live underwater while others live underground? Why do birds lay eggs and mammals produce live young? Why do insects produce hundreds or even thousands of offspring while elephants produce only a few? These are the types of questions that we ask in evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology. I am also interested in reproductive behaviour – why for instance do some males make a huge effort to build elaborate nests and displays for females to judge, or spend years growing fancy long tails or large antlers? What are females looking for when they judge which males will be the best father for their offspring? How much of their behaviour is due to the genes they have or the environment they are in, and does it change over time?

To answer these sorts of questions I use very simple insects as a ‘model’ to suggest what is happening in nature. Insects such as small fruit flies exist all over the world and in all kinds of different habitats so they are a very good representation of an animal that has to cope with all sorts of different environments. By bringing them into the lab and keeping them in small populations we can examine how behaviour of males and females changes, how their genes are inherited over lots of generations and how they respond to important things like temperature.

A typical day for me would include some reading – there are hundreds of scientific papers published every day and it’s important to spend some time each day reading new things and keeping up with what kind of research is happening and where. I never know when I might need to contact someone who is doing some research that I am interested in and ask questions.

A typical day for me will also include some writing – it’s important to publish the results I have found and so I will spend some of my time writing a scientific paper to explain to other scientists what I have found, what it means and how this changes the way we think about our subject. Sometimes I may be working on several different papers at once with many co-authors from different universities, so I have to juggle my time to make sure they all get some of my attention. I also maintain the research group website and blog so I spend some time updating these so that other people not directly connected with my project can see what I’m researching and contact me if needed.

A typical day for me would also include some experimental planning and data analysis – most of my research at the moment is conducted in the laboratory with the help of a research technician. We are currently about half way through a three year project and so we have many experiments running at the moment. I have lots of different results that I need to examine and understand. I am responsible for presenting the data to my colleagues as graphs, tables or charts and for making the first conclusions about the results we have found.

A typical day will also require some time to deal with unexpected events! Nothing is for certain, not even in science, so an experiment may go wrong, a student may need help with their research, I may need to go to a group meeting or talk to someone who is visiting us for the day. I have to allow some time to take care of the things I had not planned on doing that day and change my schedule if necessary.