Overview

I am a behavioural and evolutionary ecologist and conservation biologist with wide-ranging interests centred on how organisms, particularly beetles, respond and adapt to changes in the environments they experience.

I am particularly interested in parental care, sexual selection, mating systems, reproductive conflicts of interest, behavioural plasticity, social behaviour and evolution, life-history evolution and conservation. My work involves both invertebrate and vertebrate systems in the field and in the lab. Most of my current research involves using beetles, including Nicrophorus vespilloides burying beetles, Carabus intricatus, the blue ground beetle, and various species of dung beetle. But I have extensive experience working on vertebrates too, especially birds.     

I am also the Director of Postgraduate Research for the 100+ PGR students in the Centre for Ecology & Conservation.

Google Scholar  Researchgate Orcid The Evolution of Parental Care book Twitter  

Qualifications

1998 PhD Zoology (University of Durham)
1993 BSc Ecology (University of Edinburgh)

Career

2022-present Associate Professor, University of Exeter

2012-2022 Senior Lecturer, University of Exeter

2008-2012 Lecturer, University of Exeter

2007-2008 NERC postdoctoral fellowship, University of Exeter

2005-2006 NERC postdoctoral fellowship, University of Glasgow

2002-2005 PDRA, University of Glasgow

1998-2001 PDRA, Lancaster University

Research group links

• Behavioural Ecology

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Research

Research interests

My behavioural/evolutionary research centres on addressing how organisms adapt to changes in their environment (social and/or non-social), with a particular focus on (plasticity) in parental care and sexual selection, within-family conflicts over parental investment and the co-evolutionary relationship between mating behaviours and parental care. In addition I work more broadly on the ecology, conservation and management of various organisms, primarily beetles. In addition to other ecologists I collaborate with microbiologists, ecotoxicologists, theoreticians and conservation professionals, among others, in my research.

I mostly use Nicrophorus vespilloides burying beetles in the lab or the field to address the questions that I am interested in, but also work on other species including blue ground beetles Carabus intricatus, various species of dung beetles and birds, such as blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus and canada geese Branta canadensis.

Research projects

Current funded research projects 

Ecology and conservation of blue ground beetles 

Blue ground beetles Carabus intricatus are the largest species of UK ground beetle but are found at only a handful of sites, primarily on Dartmoor. They are a UK BAP priority species and in Category 1 (Endangered) of the Red Data Book list that is declining in Europe. The species has a very restricted distribution within the south west and has a stronghold on two Natural England managed Dartmoor NNRs - Dendles Wood and Bovey Valley Woods. The UK BAP for blue ground beetles states that ‘the key to expanding the range of this species is to restore or create more areas of suitable habitat’. However, relatively little is known about their biology, particularly their habitat requirements and preferences, population size and structure and foraging ecology. Such knowledge is essential in order to be able to implement successful conservation practices to boost populations.

This project aims to determine habitat preferences, spatio-temporal activity, foraging ecology and population characteristics of blue ground beetles both within the NNRs and land owned by the Dartmoor National Park Authority, Dartmoor Preservation Association and the Woodland Trust, with the longer term objective of ‘restoring or creating more areas of suitable habitat’ as prioritized by the UK BAP.

NERC CASE studentship in partnership with Dartmoor National Park Authority, Natural England, The Woodland Trust and Buglife

Brogan Pett is the PhD student 

Managing the competition: How do burying beetles and microbes sustainably coexist in competition over shared resources?

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most important public health issues that society currently faces. Inappropriate use of antibiotics has accelerated the rate at which bacteria have evolved resistance and the development of new antimicrobials is very expensive and time-consuming and has almost come to a halt. Consequently we need to develop better ways to sustainably utilize existing and future antimicrobials. Burying beetles provide an example of evolved resistance management so are ideal for addressing these issues.

In this project we are taking a novel eco-evolutionary approach to combatting antimicrobial resistance that experimentally perturbs this tractable system in order to unlock resistance management secrets from 100 million years of co-evolution between burying beetle parental care and microbes.  

NERC standard grant

Dr Michael Jardine is the PDRF 

Call of nature: How do livestock veterinary drugs impact dung beetles and other macroinvertebrates, their microbiota and associated ecosystem services?

The activities of dung beetles and other soil macroinvertebrates support the maintenance of healthy soils by facilitating the breakdown of dung through combined direct consumption and facilitated microbial community action, but livestock veterinary drugs such as avermectins and antibiotics threaten such ecosystem services. Although avermectins (wormers) and antibiotics are both routinely administered to livestock and may be present in dung at the same time the combinational impacts (negative or positive) of these veterinary drugs on dung beetle behaviour, reproduction, soil fauna-microbiome interactions, and associated ecosystem level consequences are likely to be substantive but have not been studied before.

This project aims to address these issues to provide a better understanding of the processes involved which may help improve food security and mitigate against antibiotic resistance, biodiversity loss and climate change in agricultural environments.

NERC ECORISC CDT studentship in partnership with UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and RSPB 

Laura Penny is the PhD student 

Research networks

​Current collaborations

• Gillian Gilbert (RSPB)
• Jo Hackman (Natural England)
• Xav Harrison (University of Exeter)
• Alastair Hotchkiss (Woodland Trust - now Natural Resources Wales)
• Richard Knott (Dartmoor National Parks Authority) 
• Laura Larkin (Buglife)
• Ben Raymond (University of Exeter)
• Mario Recker (University of Exeter)
• Dave Spurgeon (UKCEH)
• David Studholme (University of Exeter)
• Andrew Whitehouse (Buglife)

Research grants

• 2021 NERC Std Grant
  Managing the competition: How do burying beetles and microbes sustainably coexist in competition over shared resources?
• 2011 NERC Std Grant
  "Social and co-evolutionary dynamics of mating and parental care"
• 2009 NERC
  "Food, sex and death"
• 2007 NERC
  "Costs and consequences of the structured family"
• 2005 NERC Std Grant
  "Signals of genetic quality in a genetically heritable social environment"
• 2005 NERC
  "Costs, consequences and context-dependency of intrafamilial conflict"

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Publications

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Teaching

• BIO2430 Behavioural Ecology
• BIO3136 Research Project
• BIO3413 Animal Life Histories
• BIO3419 Yukon-Alaska field course
• BIOM052 MSci Research Project
• BIOM4009 MSc Research Project
• BIOM4019 MSc Africa Behavioural Ecology field course

Modules

2024/25

• BIO3413 - Animal Life Histories

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Supervision / Group

Alumni

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Office Hours:

Tuesdays & Thursdays 1500-1600 (in person or online via Teams - send me a direct message to arrange the latter)

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