I am broadly interested in all things evolutionary, particularly those related to sexual or social selection. My research ranges from genital morphology to female aggression and the expression of secondary sexual characters. I'm currently based at Christ Church College and the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford in the UK. I'm interested in a broad range of topics and am always happy to talk about potential collaborations. My main focus right now, though is on female-female competition, with the majority of my work looking at the role of mating in increasing female aggression in fruit flies.
Mutual ornamentation: Female aggression in stalk-eyed flies
A small female (bottom, with shorter eyestalks) taking on a large female (top, with longer eyestalks).
The majority of work focusing on exaggerated morphological traits, such as large antlers in red deer, or dramatic tails in peacocks, focuses on males carrying those traits. This is because classical sexual selection theory argues that only males should have these traits as it is too costly for females to have large traits and produce all the offspring. However, in many species females also possess exaggerated traits. While the most common explanation for female possession of exaggerated traits is that females share genes with males, there are also various adaptive explanations. The first hypothesis is that females use these traits to attract males, in similar and different ways to how males use their display traits to attract females. The second, which is what I work on, is that these traits are used in female competition.
In stalk-eyed flies, both males and females possess long stalks on the sides of their heads, with their eyes on the end at the front of their ends (those are their eyes on the end). In the species that I work on, Teleopsis dalmanni, males have much longer eye-stalks than females. We know that females prefer males with longer eyestalks, and new research suggests that males prefer females with longer eyestalks. Previous work suggests that males also use their eyestalks to judge the strength of a competitor in male-male fights, but we don't know whether females use their eyestalks in female-female fights. I investigated whether females use these eyestalks as signals in female-female competition over food. It turns out that it's actually really difficult to tell. Larger females win in these encounters, and these females also have longer eyestalks, which suggests that females can tell the size of their opponent based on their eyestalk size. However, in neither males nor females does eyestalk size give you any more information about your opponent's strength than just looking at body size.
You can check out the published version of this work here.
In stalk-eyed flies, both males and females possess long stalks on the sides of their heads, with their eyes on the end at the front of their ends (those are their eyes on the end). In the species that I work on, Teleopsis dalmanni, males have much longer eye-stalks than females. We know that females prefer males with longer eyestalks, and new research suggests that males prefer females with longer eyestalks. Previous work suggests that males also use their eyestalks to judge the strength of a competitor in male-male fights, but we don't know whether females use their eyestalks in female-female fights. I investigated whether females use these eyestalks as signals in female-female competition over food. It turns out that it's actually really difficult to tell. Larger females win in these encounters, and these females also have longer eyestalks, which suggests that females can tell the size of their opponent based on their eyestalk size. However, in neither males nor females does eyestalk size give you any more information about your opponent's strength than just looking at body size.
You can check out the published version of this work here.
Copulations lead to conflict
Drosophila melanogaster mating.
Courtesy of Xinyang Hong
My current work is investigating the link between mating and female aggression in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster). Our article is due to be published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on 15th May, so look out for it soon!
Reproductive isolation and interference
Two T. angusticollis individuals on the cover of Evolution. Photo by Russell Bonduriansky
How species recognise and interact with each other is a crucial question in evolutionary biology. I studied whether two closely related species of Neriid fly (Telostylinus angusticollis and Telostylinus lineolatus) can identify individuals of different species, how they act towards individuals of different species, and finally, whether it is physically possible for individuals of different species to mate. Males of both species were indiscriminate in their attempts to mate with females of either species, whereas females were more particular. T. lineolatus females were more choosy than T. angusticollis females. Although males of the species differ markedly in their genitalia, female genitalia is very similar across species. Despite this similarity in female genitalia, T. lineolatus males could transfer sperm to T. angusticollis females, but not vice versa.
You can check out the published version here.
You can check out the published version here.
