Research Projects

The following four projects are given in the most basic detail only. In each case there is some scope for how the project can develop, depending upon both the interests of the student and also the results of the first stage of the analysis, and I have deliberately not set out a specific course of action for this reason.

1) Infanticide in primates occurs when a male kills the offspring of another male. New work with Carola Borries and Andreas Koenig from the State University of New York at Stony Brook has developed a model of infanticide by primates within multi-male groups, whereas previous work had considered single male groups only. In fact, although there is a general framework for groups with more than a single male, so far only the simplest case of the two-male group has been tackled. In some species there can be several males in a group and this can seriously affect behaviour, but it also complicates the analysis. This project aims to extend the model to this more general case, in order to be able to analyse a wider variety of real situations.

2) The evolution of toxins and the signaling of their unpalatability to predators (by use of conspicuous colouration) has been modelled by Graeme Ruxton from the University of Glasgow, Mike Speed from the University of Liverpool and myself. We have considered a single species only. There are other species however, who often mimic the colouration of dangerous species without being toxic themselves. For instance harmless hoverflies have the same distinctive black and yellow patterning as wasps. This similarity is beneficial to the hoverflies but costly to the wasps. The aim of this project is to investigate the evolution of such a two species system. Note that there are also many possibilities for extending the work for a single species.

3) Many types of animals spend a large proportion of their lives in groups, and the group must find a way of dividing its resources amongst its members. In such groups, a dominance hierarchy will form, giving some individuals priority over others. With Chris Cannings and Glenn Vickers from the University of Sheffield, I have developed models of the formation of dominance hierarchies from animals meeting for the first time using pairwise games in dependence structures. The basic theory has been formed and some example structures have been considered. The type of structure appropriate for a given species depends both upon how the group is initially formed and the type of hierarchy that will result. One aim of this project is to consider a more general set of structures and see how this affects the behaviour in the hierarchy. More recently I have developed rather different dominance models with other co-workers, and a second aim is to investigate the modeling of dominance more generally.

4) Brood parasitism is the laying of eggs by birds in the nests of others to avoid the costs of rearing the chicks, and can be intraspecific (within the same species) or interspecific (the parasitism of one species by another). Work with Graeme Ruxton from the University of Glasgow has focused on modelling intraspecific brood parasitism in various ways. A current DPhil project considers an extension of this model to interspecific brood parasitism. This is the type of brood parasitism most commonly known amongst the public, and is carried out by parasites such as cuckoos and cowbirds. These models can be extended in various ways, to include multiple host species and the interaction of a population throughout a breeding season (some of which is under way in the current project).

[Home Page] [Research Interests]