The Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation group at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus focuses on how individual behaviour ultimately drives population level processes and how we can use our understanding of behaviour to inform conservation efforts. We are interested in the evolution of cooperation and social behaviour in organisms, from insects to primates, that form societies.
A key goal is to understand how and when cooperative behavior is adaptive, how societies form and remain stable, and how conflicts are resolved. Many behavioural studies interface with physiology, for example, what are the roles of carotenoids in life-history trade-offs? What are the effects of endocrine hormones on ornaments and on immune function? What are the carry-over effects of migration? At higher scales, we study a broad range of ecological questions: What limits species distributions? What regulates populations? What processes structure communities and drive patterns of colonization and extinction?
Directed conservation research is carried out on the most pressing issues including: the impacts of renewable energy generation; interactions between wildlife, fisheries and agriculture; emerging infectious disease; invasive species; over-harvesting; and the impacts of climate change.
We take a multifaceted approach, combining field, laboratory, and modeling studies, carried out globally in many ecosystems ranging from farmland to coral reefs, and focused on a range of taxa including plants, insects, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals.
