Is variation in aggression across species associated with how many offspring they can produce?
Using eight species of Drosophila, we test whether flies that produce more offspring are more aggressive over food.
In this paper with Jenny Gleason, we investigate how mating influences female aggression in eight Drosophila species and find out that they do things completely differently to Drosophila melanogaster. Interestingly, we find that how much aggression females show across species is related to how many ovarioles they have - species with more ovarioles (who can produce more offspring) are more aggressive.
Read about it here!
Read about it here!
I am an Assistant Professor in Behavioural Ecology in the Department of Biosciences at Durham University. I'm currently studying the effects of mating on female aggression in fruit flies, and looking at female-female aggression in a variety of other species.
Find out more about my research on my Research page.
News
July 2025
I have started a new job as Assistant Professor in Behavioural Ecology at Durham University!
April 2025Two papers out:
Is variation in female aggressiveness across Drosophila species associated with reproductive potential? In this paper with Jenny Gleason, we investigate how mating influences female aggression in eight Drosophila species and find out that they do things completely differently to Drosophila melanogaster. Interestingly, we find that how much aggression females show across species is related to how many ovarioles they have - species with more ovarioles (who can produce more offspring) are more aggressive. Read about it here! Fear of mating out (FOMO): voyeurism does not increase mating propensity in fruit flies?In this paper with Regina Vega-Trejo, Krish Sanghvi, Biliana Todorova, and Irem Sepil, we investigate whether flies that see other flies mating are more likely to mate themselves. We don't find much evidence of this, but it was a fun experiment testing a long-held belief in the fly lab. Read about it here! March 2022Two papers out:
How does aggression evolve in response to the sex ratio? In this paper with Dani Edmunds, Jen Perry and others, we studied male and female aggression and how they evolved in response to experimentally manipulated sex ratios. Spoiler: it's all about the females! Read all about it here! How does male condition affect how aggressive they can make females? In a cool paper in conjunction with Irem Sepil, Stuart Wigby, and two fantastic undergrads (Daisy and Toby), we looked at how the condition of a male affects how much aggression he can induce in his mate. Read the onlineOpen version here! August 2020In this paper with Jen Perry and Jessica Thomson, we found no differences between males and females in their anxiety-like behaviours.
There was also no effect of mating status or sex peptide, but there was an effect of sex peptide receptor. Read all about it here! July 2020This paper (led by Irem Sepil) was 5 years in the making - investigating how sperm and seminal fluid proteins age differently and how we can ameliorate the effects of ageing on male ejaculates.
Read the paper here! Check out Irem's twitter summary and video here April 2020New paper out in PloS ONE looking at when female flies start to get aggressive after mating. Link here.
October 2019I have started two new positions - I am now a Departmental Lecturer in Biology (Behaviour) in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford!
I've also started as a Stipendiary Lecturer in Biology at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. February 2019I was invited to give a seminar at the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge.
Thanks to Dr Rahia Mashoodh for hosting me. November 2018I was invited to give a seminar at the Centre for Biological Diversity at St Andrews University.
Thanks to Dr Catherine Sheard for hosting me. September 2018My latest paper with Stu Wigby and Ju Morimoto has been published in Functional Ecology!
August 2018Dani Edmunds, Lucy Harper, and I ran a BIG experiment on sex ratio and aggression, investigating how sexual selection may alter male and female aggression.
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