Simon C Griffith

Macquarie University · School of Natural Sciences

Understanding genetic incompatibilities and genetic introgression between incipient species are major goals in evolutionary biology. Mitochondrial genes evolve rapidly and exist in dense gene networks with coevolved nuclear genes, suggesting that mitochondrial respiration may be particularly susceptible to disruption in hybrid organisms. Mitonuclea...

Predation is well known to have substantial effects on behaviour and fitness in many animals. In songbirds, nest predation is rarely observed directly, so that research focusses primarily on the consequences of predation and less on the behaviour of the predator. Here, we report predation data in a zebra finch ( Taeniopygia catanosis ) nest box pop...

Global contamination of environments with lead (Pb) poses threats to many ecosystems and populations. While exposure to Pb is toxic at high concentrations, recent literature has shown that lower concentrations can also cause sublethal, deleterious effects. However, there remains relatively little causal investigation of how exposure to lower concen...

Lead contaminated soil is a persistent global threat to the health of animal populations. Nevertheless, links between soil lead and its adverse effects on exposed wildlife remain poorly understood. Here, we explore local geographic patterns of exposure in urban birds along a gradient of lead contamination in Broken Hill, an Australian mining city....

Many animals maintain long-term monogamous partnerships, but the extent to which partners interact varies substantially and has implications for the scope of cooperation between pair members. Zebra finches are monogamously paired for life, raising questions as to if and how they maintain pair cohesion in the absence of having territories and in the...

Extreme weather conditions, like heatwave events, are becoming more frequent with climate change. Animals often modify their behaviour to cope with environmental changes and extremes. During heat stress conditions, individuals change their spatial behaviour and increase the use of shaded areas to assist with thermoregulation. Here, we suggest that...

The interconnecting links (edges) between individuals (nodes) in an animal social network are often defined by discrete, directed behaviours (interactions). However, where interactions are difficult to observe, a network edge is instead defined as individuals sharing space or overlapping in time (an association). Despite an increasingly accessible...

Our understanding of connections between human and animal health has advanced substantially since the canary was introduced as a sentinel of toxic conditions in coal mines. Nonetheless, development of wildlife sentinels for monitoring human exposure to toxins has been limited. Here, we capitalised on a three-decade long child blood lead monitoring...

Understanding genetic incompatibilities and genetic introgression between incipient species are major goals in evolutionary biology. Mitochondrial genes evolve rapidly and exist in dense gene networks with coevolved nuclear genes, suggesting that mitochondrial respiration may be particularly susceptible to disruption in hybrid organisms. Mitonuclea...

Sperm traits are important in determining fertilisation success and are metabolically expensive to produce. There is little known about how energy acquisition and allocation affect sperm traits in avian taxa. This study assesses the impact of experimentally manipulated diet on long‐tailed finch sperm by comparing the length of sperm components (hea...

Although variation in effect sizes and predicted values among studies of similar phenomena is inevitable, such variation far exceeds what might be produced by sampling error alone. One possible explanation for variation among results is differences among researchers in the decisions they make regarding statistical analyses. A growing array of studi...

As a result of a warming global climate, understanding how organisms adjust their behaviour to environmental thermal conditions has become an increasingly important question in animal biology. Temperature‐driven adjustments in parental care are potentially important given the repercussions on offspring size, quality and survival. In 2015 and 2016 w...

The social and spatial organisation of avian societies is often complex and dynamic with individuals socialising with others in a local population. Although social interactions can readily be described in colonial breeders through the location of nests, social interactions regularly take place in other contexts that are often not considered. Social...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/10.1098/rsos.230402.][This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1115.].

Animals constantly experience periods of uncertainty due to seasonal changes in food distribution. The changing climate results in more variable weather patterns, which in turn alter environmental conditions, and can result in resource distribution being less predictable in space and time. How animals respond to these uncertain conditions, in parti...

Fission–fusion events, i.e. changes to the size and composition of animal social groups, are a mechanism to adjust the social environment in response to short-term changes in the cost–benefit ratio of group living. Furthermore, the time and location of fission–fusion events provide insight into the underlying drivers of these dynamics. Here, we des...

Birds that breed opportunistically maintain partial activation of reproductive systems to rapidly exploit environmental conditions when they become suitable for breeding. Maintaining reproductive systems outside of a breeding context is costly. For males, these costs are thought to include continual exposure to testosterone. Males of seasonally bre...

Avian females can alter nest‐site selection and breeding behaviour in response to changes in ambient temperature. However, whether females alter eggshell characteristics in response to high ambient temperature is underexplored. To fill this gap, wild‐derived and domesticated Zebra Finches were bred at temperatures of 18 °C and 30 °C or 35 °C. Here...

As a result of a warming global climate, understanding how organisms adjust their behaviour to environmental thermal conditions has become an increasingly important question in animal biology. Temperature-driven adjustments in parental care are potentially important due to their repercussions on offspring size, quality and survival. In 2015 and 201...

Understanding the consequences of heat exposure on mitochondrial function is crucial as mitochondria lie at the core of metabolic processes, also affecting population dynamics. In adults, mitochondrial metabolism varies with temperature but can also depend on thermal conditions experienced during development. We exposed zebra finches to two alterna...

Extreme weather conditions, like heatwave events, are becoming more frequent with climate change. Animals often modify their behaviour to cope with environmental changes and extremes. If the environmental conditions influence the trade-off between an individual's social propensity and optimal thermoregulation through shade use for instance, then di...

Mating behavior can play a key role in speciation by inhibiting or facilitating gene flow between closely related taxa. Hybrid zones facilitate a direct examination of mating behavior and the traits involved in establishing species barriers. The long‐tailed finch (Poephila acuticauda) has two hybridizing subspecies that differ in bill color (red an...

Heat waves are predicted to be detrimental for organismal physiology with costs for survival that could be reflected in markers of biological state such as telomeres. Changes in early life telomere dynamics driven by thermal stress are of particular interest during the early post-natal stages of altricial birds because nestlings quickly shift from...

Male songbirds sing to establish territories and to attract mates.¹,² However, increasing reports of singing in non-reproductive contexts³ and by females⁴,⁵ show that song use is more diverse than previously considered. Therefore, alternative functions of song, such as social cohesion³ and synchronization of breeding, by and large, were overlooked...

Understanding the consequences of heat exposure on mitochondrial function is crucial as mitochondria lie at the core of metabolic processes, also affecting population dynamics. In adults, mitochondrial metabolism varies with temperature but can also depend on thermal conditions experienced during development. We exposed zebra finches to two alterna...

Trait databases have become important resources for large-scale comparative studies in ecology and evolution. Here we introduce the AnimalTraits database, a curated database of body mass, metabolic rate and brain size, in standardised units, for terrestrial animals. The database has broad taxonomic breadth, including tetrapods, arthropods, molluscs...

Sperm traits can influence fertilisation success, but there is still much we do not understand about sperm condition dependence, that is, how much sperm traits depend on the male's energy acquisition and allocation. This is especially pronounced in avian taxa, despite extensive observational studies and sampling in wild populations. In this study w...

Social information gathered by observing others often supplements personal information collected from direct interactions with the physical environment during decision-making. Social information use may be particularly beneficial in harsh environments or if resources are distributed patchily, ephemeral, and unpredictable, and hence difficult to loc...

To understand why avian eggs are so variable in colour and patterning, we investigated the characteristics of extant bird species that provide insight into the evolutionary transitions that occurred during the early radiation of the songbirds. We quantified egg colour and patterning from museum collections of 269 species of Australian passerine and...

Telomere length and DNA methylation (DNAm) are two promising biomarkers of biological age. Environmental factors and life history traits are known to affect variation in both these biomarkers, especially during early life, yet surprisingly little is known about their reciprocal association, especially in natural populations. Here, we explore how va...

Birdsong is typically seen as a long-range signal functioning in mate attraction and territory defense. Among birds, the zebra finch is the prime model organism in bioacoustics, yet almost exclusively studied in the lab. In the wild, however, zebra finch song differs strikingly from songbirds commonly studied in the wild as zebra finch males sing m...

There is growing evidence of important variation in how animals age, in particular in how the expression of traits changes with age among different species and populations. However, less is known about variation within populations, which may include variation in ageing patterns between different types of individuals (e.g. sexes or distinct polymorp...

Evidence from a number of species suggests behaviours associated with social rank are positively correlated with metabolic rate. These studies, however, are based on metabolic measurements of isolated individuals, thereby ignoring potential effects of social interactions on metabolic rates. Here, we characterised three pertinent metabolic indices i...

Aviculturists are enthusiastic to be included in conservation efforts by providing expertise or genetic stock to support captive-breeding or reintroduction programmes, but little work has explored these possibilities. Bringing organisms into captivity can have rapid and profound effects on behaviour, physiology, and population genetic diversity, wh...

Spermatozoa exhibit remarkable levels of morphological diversification among and within species. Among the passerine birds, the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) has become a model system for studies of sperm biology, yet studies of closely related Estrildidae finches remain scarce. Here, we examine sperm morphology in the masked finch (Poephila pe...

Research on sperm is incorporated into many areas of ecology and evolution including including sexual selection, reproductive physiology and ecotoxicology, as well as comparative studies in evolution and phylogenetics. Currently, producing data on sperm morphology involves several time-consuming steps, particularly photographing sperm and measuring...

The exploration of hybrid zones and the intergenomic conflicts exposed through hybridization provide windows into the processes of divergence and speciation. Sex chromosomes and mitonuclear incompatibilities have strong associations with the genetics of hybrid dysfunction. In ZW sex‐determining systems, maternal co‐inheritance of the mitochondrial...

Animals living in arid or semi‐arid environments are frequently exposed to the challenge of dealing with extreme high ambient temperatures that are predicted to become more severe with a changing climate as heatwaves increase in frequency and severity. In addition to the adverse effects of heatwaves on adults, high temperatures are likely to have d...

Human-induced climate change is increasing the frequency, duration, and intensity of heat waves and exposure to these extreme temperatures impacts individual physiology and performance (e.g., metabolism, water balance, and growth). These traits may be susceptible to thermal conditions experienced during embryonic development, but experiments focusi...

Telomere length and DNA methylation (DNAm) are two promising biomarkers of biological age. Environmental factors and life history traits are known to affect variation in both these biomarkers, especially during early life, yet surprisingly little is known about their reciprocal association. Here, we present the first study on a natural population t...

Zebra Finches have become the most widely researched bird species outside of those used in agricultural production. Their adoption as the avian model of choice is largely down to a number of characteristics that make them easy to obtain and use in captivity. The main point of our paper is that the very characteristics that make the Zebra Finch a hi...

Family living is a stepping stone to higher-order social structures including cooperatively breeding groups, but understanding why offspring remain with parents by delaying dispersal remains a challenge. One rarely studied aspect of family living is communal huddle roosting, where individuals group together overnight for thermoregulatory and/or ant...

In birds ambient temperature can influence adult incubation behaviour, energy budget, egg temperature, and embryonic development with downstream effects on offspring survival. Surprisingly, experimental manipulations of the whole nesting environment to test causes and consequences of variation in incubation pattern, energy balance, egg temperature,...

Species are increasingly confronted with extreme climatic conditions such as heatwaves. Behavioural changes are an important response to changed environmental conditions. We investigated how free-ranging sheep (Ovis aries) in large rangeland paddocks respond to heatwave conditions in the arid zone of Australia. We defined heatwaves as a three-day p...

Background So far, large numbers of studies investigating the microbiome have focused on gut microbiota and less have addressed the microbiome of the skin. Especially in avian taxa our understanding of the ecology and function of these bacteria remains incomplete. The involvement of skin bacteria in intra-specific communication has recently receive...

Background In seasonally breeding birds, the reproductive tract undergoes a dramatic circannual cycle of recrudescence and regression, with oviduct size increasing 5–220 fold from the non-breeding to the breeding state. Opportunistically breeding birds can produce multiple clutches sequentially across an extended period in response primarily to env...

Background In arid environments, plant primary productivity is generally low and highly variable both spatially and temporally. Resources are not evenly distributed in space and time (e.g., soil nutrients, water), and depend on global (El Niño/ Southern Oscillation) and local climate parameters. The launch of the Sentinel2-satellite, part of the Eu...

Desert birds inhabit hot, dry environments that are becoming hotter and drier as a consequence of climate change. Extreme weather such as heatwaves can cause mass-mortality events that may significantly impact populations and species. There are currently insufficient data concerning physiological plasticity to inform models of species' response to...

Background: An animal’s skin is densely populated with a physiological community of bacteria that represents the first barrier to its environment. Investigations on the physiological skin flora have emerged in recent years, but especially in avian taxa our understanding of the ecology and function of these bacteria remains incomplete. The involveme...

Background: So far, large numbers of studies investigating the microbiome have focused on gut microbiota and less have addressed the microbiome of the skin. Especially in avian taxa our understanding of the ecology and function of these bacteria remains incomplete. The involvement of skin bacteria in intra-specific communication has recently receiv...

Background: So far, large numbers of studies investigating the microbiome have focused on gut microbiota and less have addressed the microbiome of the skin. Especially in avian taxa our understanding of the ecology and function of these bacteria remains incomplete. The involvement of skin bacteria in intra-specific communication has recently receiv...

Epigenetic changes associated with early life conditions are known to play a significant role in shaping the adult phenotype. Studies of DNA methylation in wild animals are lacking, yet are important for understanding the fitness consequences of environmentally induced epigenetic change. In our study, we quantified variation in DNA methylation in w...

The intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as heat waves, are increasing as a consequence of global warming. Acute periods of extreme heat can be more problematic for wildlife than a chronic increase in mean temperature, to which animals can potentially acclimatise. Predicting effects of heat exposure requires a clear understanding...

Previous experience with a partner can improve reproductive coordination between a pair and increase offspring production. We paired inexperienced zebra finches and investigated how a pairs’ experience and their reproductive success together (i.e., whether they were successful or unsuccessful at rearing chicks) related to the number of sperm reachi...

In many birds, there is significant variation in egg size both across and within clutches that remains to be explained. Birds lay one egg per day and in hot climates, the first laid eggs may start to develop before the laying of the rest of the clutch is complete, through warming by the ambient air temperature. Here, we test the hypothesis that in...

Socially monogamous birds have provided a major focus of research in the field of sexual selection, providing insight into the evolution of ornaments, sexual dimorphism and sex roles. Following important theoretical work in the 1970's, there has been a continued emphasis on elements of the sexual conflict between socially monogamous partners. The a...

Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that coordinating offspring provisioning plays a significant role in stabilizing cooperative care systems, with benefits to developing young. However, a warming and increasingly extreme climate might be expected to make contributions to, and so coordination of, care more challenging, particularly in co...

Global environmental change is leading to an increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events, so effective environmental management requires an understanding not only of the physiological response of organisms to increased mean temperatures, but also to extreme environmental conditions. To determine the physiological co...

Since the first molecular study providing evidence for mating outside the pair bond in birds over 30 years ago, >500 studies have reported rates of extra‐pair paternity (EPP) in >300 bird species. Here, we give a detailed overview of the current literature reporting EPP in birds and highlight the sampling biases and patterns in the dataset with res...

Many animals live and breed in colonies, and yet, with just a few exceptions, the value of the social bonds between colony members has rarely been examined. Social ties are important for group coordination at collective tasks, and social coordination can facilitate synchronized reproduction among colony members. Synchronized reproduction in turn ca...

Animals time reproductive events to overlap with periods of favorable environmental conditions. However, weather conditions can be unpredictable. Young animals may be particularly susceptible to extreme weather during sensitive developmental periods. Here, we investigated the effects of adverse weather conditions on corticosterone levels (a hormone...

Birdsong is a classic example of a learned social behaviour. Song behaviour is also influenced by genetic factors, and understanding the relative contributions of genetic and environmental influences remains a major goal. In this study, we take advantage of captive zebra finch populations to examine variation in a population-level song trait: song...

Social information can spread fast and help animals adapt in fluctuating environments. Prospecting on the breeding sites of others, a widespread behavior, can help to maximize reproduction by, for instance, settling in the same area as other successful breeders. Previous studies have shown that successful broods have the highest number of prospecto...

Colour polymorphisms play a key role in sexual selection and speciation, yet the mechanisms that generate and maintain them are not fully understood. Here, we use genomic and transcriptomic tools to identify the precise genetic architecture and evolutionary history of a sex-linked colour polymorphism in the Gouldian finch Erythrura gouldiae that is...

Organisms should aim to time their reproduction to match the optimal ecological conditions and thus maximize their fitness. However, social cues have been identified as determinants of reproductive decisions and might also be involved in coordinating the timing of reproduction. Breeding synchronously with other individuals can bring several advanta...