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Introduction
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September 1998 - present
January 1984 - December 1998
Publications
Publications (718)
Telomere length (TL) and/or its rate of change are popular biomarkers of senescence, as telomere dynamics are linked with survival and lifespan. However, the evolutionary potential of telomere dynamics has received mixed support in natural populations. To better understand how telomere dynamics evolve, it is necessary to quantify genetic variation...
Studies on wild animals, mostly undertaken using 16S metabarcoding, have yielded ambigous evidence regarding changes in the gut microbiome (GM) with age and senescence. Furthermore, variation in GM function has rarely been studied in such wild populations, despite GM metabolic characteristics potentially being associated with host senescent decline...
Divorce—terminating a pair bond whilst both members are alive—is a mating strategy observed in many socially monogamous species often linked to poor reproductive success. As environmental factors directly affect individual condition and reproductive performance, they can indirectly influence divorce. Given current climate change, understanding how...
Conservation translocations are an increasingly common tool used to help combat species extinction and global biodiversity loss. However, their success is dependent on a wide range of abiotic and biotic factors. To date, the potential role of host-associated microbiomes in translocation success has been overlooked despite their fundamental contribu...
Humans become more selective with whom they spend their time, and as a result, the social networks of older humans are smaller than those of younger ones. In non-human animals, processes such as competition and opportunity can result in patterns of declining sociality with age. While there is support for declining sociality with age in mammals, evi...
A species' demographic history gives important context to contemporary population genetics and a possible insight into past responses to climate change; with an individual's genome providing a window into the evolutionary history of contemporary populations. Pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent (PSMC) analysis uses information from a single g...
Life-history theory, central to our understanding of diversity in morphology, behaviour and senescence, describes how traits evolve through the optimisation of trade-offs in investment. Despite considerable study, there is only minimal support for trade-offs within species between the two traits most closely linked to fitness – reproductive effort...
Manually coding behaviours from videos is essential to study animal behaviour but it is labour-intensive and susceptible to inter-rater bias and reliability issues. Recent developments of computer vision tools enable the automatic quantification of behaviours, supplementing or even replacing manual annotations. However, widespread adoption of these...
Delayed offspring dispersal is an important aspect of the evolution of cooperative breeding. Applying a path-analysis approach to the long-term Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) dataset, we studied whether and how delayed dispersal is affected by territory quality, the presence of helpers and non-helping subordinates, maternal breeding...
In many species, individuals form socially monogamous pair-bonds lasting multiple breeding seasons, or even whole lifetimes. Studies often suggest social monogamy to be adaptive, but this is usually quantified through the survival and annual reproductive success of the partners. However, beyond the number of offspring produced, parental partnership...
In humans, gut microbiome (GM) differences are often correlated with, and sometimes causally implicated in, ageing. However, it is unclear how these findings translate in wild animal populations. Studies that investigate how GM dynamics change within individuals, and with declines in physiological condition, are needed to fully understand links bet...
Explaining variation in individual fitness is a key goal in evolutionary biology. Recently, telomeres, repeating DNA sequences capping chromosome ends, have gained attention as a biomarker for body state, physiological costs, and senescence. Existing research has provided mixed evidence for whether telomere length correlates with fitness, including...
When altricial birds hatch, they are unable to regulate their own temperature, but by the time they fledge they are thermally independent. Early-life conditions have been shown to be an important factor contributing to an individual's performance in adult life. However, it is currently unknown to what extent body temperature during endothermy devel...
Life-history theory, central to our understanding of diversity in morphology, behaviour and senescence, describes how traits evolve through the optimisation of trade-offs in investment. Despite considerable study, there is only minimal support for trade-offs within species between the two traits most closely linked to fitness – reproductive effort...
Explaining variation in individual fitness is a key goal in evolutionary biology. Recently, telomeres, repeating DNA sequences capping the ends of chromosomes, have gained attention as a biomarker for body state, individual quality, and ageing. However, existing research has provided mixed evidence for whether telomere length correlates with fitnes...
In socially monogamous species, sexual selection not only depends on initial mate choice but also mate switching. To date, studies lack assessment of differences between passive (widowhood) and active (divorce) mate switching, longer-term fitness consequences, and how age masks reproductive costs and benefits of divorce. We investigated causes and...
1. Divorce – the termination of a pair bond while both members are alive – is a mating strategy observed in many socially monogamous species, often linked to poor reproductive success. As environmental factors directly affect individual condition and reproductive performance, they can indirectly influence divorce. Given current climate change, unde...
Explaining variation in individual fitness is a key goal in evolutionary biology. Recently, telomeres, repeating DNA sequences capping the ends of chromosomes, have gained attention as a biomarker for body state, individual quality, and ageing. However, existing research has provided mixed evidence for whether telomere length correlates with fitnes...
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...
In cooperatively breeding species, sexually mature individuals may delay natal dispersal and become subordinates, helping a dominant pair raise offspring. To understand how cooperative breeding evolved, it is important to determine the mechanisms leading to delayed dispersal. Adult sex ratio (ASR) variation may affect dispersal by limiting breeding...
Sociality is fundamental for many species, linked to an individual’s survival and reproductive success. The evolution of social behaviours has been studied, especially in complex social animals such as birds. However, discerning the genetic basis of these behaviours has been difficult due to the lack of ecological validity and life-history in contr...
Measuring parental care behaviour in the wild is central to the study of animal ecology and evolution, but it is often labour‐ and time‐intensive. Efficient open‐source tools have recently emerged that allow animal behaviour to be quantified from videos using machine learning and computer vision techniques, but there is limited appraisal of how the...
The question of why socially monogamous females engage in extra‐pair behaviour is long‐standing in evolutionary biology. Due to a lack of empirical support among passerine birds, recent work has moved away from the indirect‐benefits hypothesis to explain extra‐pair mating behaviour by females, instead favouring the hypothesis that this is the resul...
Restoring and maintaining soil biodiversity is important for the sustainability of our food systems, particularly as the health of agricultural soils continues to degrade at alarming rates. Earthworms are key components of soil biodiversity and provide many benefits to agricultural soil functioning, but effective and standardised approaches to moni...
Cooperative breeding occurs when helpers provide alloparental care to the offspring of a breeding pair. One hypothesis of why helping occurs is that helpers gain valuable skills that may increase their own future reproductive success. However, research typically focuses on the effect of helping on short-term measures of reproductive success. Fewer...
Background
In humans, gut microbiome (GM) differences are often correlated with, and sometimes causally implicated in, ageing. However, it is unclear how these findings translate in wild animal populations. Furthermore, studies that investigate how GM dynamics change within individuals (as opposed to among individuals), and with declines in physiol...
Life-history theory, central to our understanding of diversity in morphology, behaviour and senescence, describes how traits evolve through the optimisation of trade-offs in investment. Despite considerable study, there is only minimal support for trade-offs within species between the two traits most closely linked to fitness – reproduction and sur...
Life-history theory, central to our understanding of diversity in morphology, behaviour and senescence, describes how traits evolve through the optimisation of trade-offs in investment. Despite considerable study, there is only minimal support for trade-offs within species between the two traits most closely linked to fitness – reproduction and sur...
The pace-of-life syndrome hypothesis posits that consistent between-individual variation in behavioral traits (‘animal personalities’) mediates trade-offs in life-history. Individuals with risk-averse traits are expected to follow a relatively ‘slow’ pace-of-life (long lifespan, delayed reproduction), compared to their riskier, ‘fast’, counterparts...
In cooperatively breeding species, sexually mature individuals may delay natal dispersal and become subordinates, helping a dominant pair raise offspring. To understand how cooperative breeding evolved, it is important to determine the mechanisms leading to delayed dispersal. Adult sex ratio (ASR) variation may affect dispersal through limiting bre...
A species’ demographic history provides important context to contemporary population genetics and a possible insight into past responses to climate change. An individual’s genome provides a window into the evolutionary history of contemporary populations. Pairwise Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (PSMC) analysis uses information from a single geno...
The question of why females engage in extra-pair behaviours is long-standing in evolutionary biology. One suggestion is that these behaviours are maintained through pleiotropic effects on male extra-pair behaviors (genes controlling extra-pair reproduction are shared between sexes, but only beneficial to one sex, in this case, males). However, for...
The question of why socially monogamous females engage in extra-pair behaviour is long-standing in evolutionary biology. Recent theoretical work has moved away from the indirect-benefits hypothesis to explain female extra-pair behaviours, instead favouring suggestions that they are the result of pleiotropic effects. That is, a trait under strong po...
Wastewater-based epidemiology has been used extensively throughout the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 19) pandemic to detect and monitor the spread and prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) and its variants. It has proven an excellent, complementary tool to clinical sequencing, supporting the insights gained and...
Animal sociality, an individual’s propensity to associate with others, has fitness consequences through mate choice, for example, directly, by increasing the pool of prospective partners, and indirectly through increased survival, and individuals benefit from both. Annually, fitness consequences are realized through increased mating success and sub...
Telomeres are a popular biomarker of senescence, as telomere dynamics are linked with survival and lifespan. However, the evolutionary potential of telomere dynamics, and the selection pattern that gives rise to senescence, are not well known. To better understand this, it is necessary to quantify genetic variation in telomere length, and how such...
Cooperative breeding occurs when helpers provide alloparental care to the offspring of a breeding pair. One hypothesis of why helping occurs is that helpers gain valuable experience (skills) that may increase their own future reproductive success. However, research typically focuses on the effect of helping on short-term measures of reproductive su...
Natal dispersal is a major life-history strategy that has pervasive consequences on the spatial and genetic structure of populations. Between-individual variation in personality traits is increasingly recognized as an important determinant of natal dispersal via ‘personality-dependent dispersal’. However, few studies have investigated the importanc...
Species are facing environmental challenges caused by rapidly changing environments. Globally, extreme weather events, like droughts or extreme rainfall, are increasing in frequency. Natural selection usually acts slowly, while adaptations through phenotypic plasticity are limited. Therefore, organisms may utilise other mechanisms to cope with such...
Sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater provides a key opportunity to monitor the prevalence of variants spatiotemporally, potentially facilitating their detection simultaneously with, or even prior to, observation through clinical testing. However, there are multiple sequencing methodologies available. This study aimed to evaluate the performance o...
Numerous studies have demonstrated that individuals within a species will consistently vary between one another in behavioural traits. A prominent adaptive explanation for such ‘animal personalities’ relates to an individual’s intrinsic state driving and/or being driven by behaviour. Telomeres – the protective caps at the end of chromosomes which e...
The question of why females engage in extra-pair behaviours is long-standing in evolutionary biology. One suggestion is that these behaviors are maintained through pleiotropic effects on male extra-pair behaviors and lifetime reproductive success (genes controlling extra-pair behaviours are shared between sexes, but only beneficial to one, in this...
The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) has been intensively studied for the relative effects of different evolutionary forces in recent decades. Pathogen-mediated balancing selection is generally thought to explain the high polymorphism observed in MHC genes, but it is still unclear to what extent MHC diversity is shaped by selection relative t...
Parental age can have considerable effects on offspring phenotypes and health. However, intergenerational effects may also have longer term effects on offspring fitness. Few studies have investigated parental age effects on offspring fitness in natural populations while also testing for sex‐ and environment‐specific effects. Further, longitudinal p...
Telomeres, DNA structures located at the end of eukaryotic chromosomes, shorten with each cellular cycle. The shortening rate is affected by factors associated with stress, and, thus telomere length has been used as a biomarker of ageing, disease, and different life history trade-offs. Telomere research has received much attention in the last decad...
Environmental conditions experienced during early life may have long‐lasting effects on later‐life phenotypes and fitness. Individuals experiencing poor early‐life conditions may suffer subsequent fitness constraints. Alternatively, individuals may use a strategic “Predictive Adaptive Response” (PAR), whereby they respond—in terms of physiology or...
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been used extensively throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to detect and monitor the spread and prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. It has proven an excellent, complementary tool to clinical sequencing, supporting the insights gained and helping to make informed public health decisions. Consequently, many...
Life-history theory, central to our understanding of diversity in morphology, behaviour and senescence, describes how traits evolve through the optimisation of trade-offs in investment. Despite considerable study, there is only minimal support for trade-offs within species between the two traits most closely linked to fitness - reproduction and sur...
Offspring of older parents in many species have decreased longevity, a faster ageing rate and lower fecundity than offspring born to younger parents. Biomarkers of ageing, such as telomeres, that tend to shorten as individuals age, may provide insight into the mechanisms of such parental age effects. Parental age may be associated with offspring te...
Fitness is at the core of evolutionary theory, but it is difficult to measure accurately. One way to measure long-term fitness is by calculating the individual’s reproductive value, which represents the expected number of allele copies an individual passes on to distant future generations. However, this metric of fitness is scarcely used because th...
Chromosomal inversions frequently underlie major phenotypic variation maintained by divergent selection within and between sexes. Here we examine whether and how intralocus conflicts contribute to balancing selection stabilizing an autosomal inversion polymorphism in the ruff Calidris pugnax. In this lekking shorebird, three male mating morphs (Ind...
Background
The gut microbiome (GM) can influence many biological processes in the host, impacting its health and survival, but the GM can also be influenced by the host’s traits. In vertebrates, Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes play a pivotal role in combatting pathogens and are thought to shape the host’s GM. Despite this—and the docum...
Measuring parental care behaviour in the wild is central to the study of animal life-history trade-offs, but is often labour and time-intensive. More efficient machine learning-based video processing tools have recently emerged that allow parental nest visit rates to be measured using video cameras and computer processing. Here, we used open-source...
In socially monogamous species, extra‐pair paternity (EPP) is predicted to increase variance in male reproductive success beyond that resulting from genetic monogamy, thus increasing the ‘opportunity for selection’ (maximum strength of selection that can act on traits). This prediction is challenging to investigate in wild populations because lifet...
Animal sociality, an individual’s propensity to associate with others, has fitness consequences through mate choice, for example, directly, by increasing the pool of prospective partners, and indirectly through increased survival and individuals benefit from both. Annually, fitness consequences are realised through increased mating success and subs...
Background
The vertebrate gut microbiome (GM) can vary substantially across individuals within the same natural population. Although there is evidence linking the GM to health in captive animals, very little is known about the consequences of GM variation for host fitness in the wild. Here, we explore the relationship between faecal microbiome dive...
Fitness is at the core of evolutionary theory, but it is difficult to measure accurately. One way to measure long-term fitness is by calculating the individual’s reproductive value, which represents the expected number of allele copies an individual passes on to distant future generations. However, this metric of fitness is scarcely used because th...
Parental age can have considerable effects on offspring phenotypes and health. However, intergenerational effects may also have longer-term effects on offspring fitness. Few studies have investigated parental age effects on offspring fitness in natural populations while also testing for sex- and environment-specific effects. Further, longitudinal p...
Background: The vertebrate gut microbiome (GM) can vary substantially across individuals within the same natural population. Although there is evidence linking the GM to health in captive animals, very little is known about the consequences of GM variation for host fitness in the wild. Here, we explore the relationship between faecal microbiome div...
1.Environmental conditions experienced during early life may have long-lasting effects on later-life phenotypes and fitness. Individuals experiencing poor early-life conditions may suffer subsequent fitness constraints. Alternatively, individuals may use a strategic ‘Predictive Adaptive Response’ (PAR), whereby they respond – in terms of physiology...
Background: The gut microbiome (GM) can influence many biological processes in the host, impacting its health and survival, but the GM can also be influenced by the host’s traits. In vertebrates, Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes play a pivotal role in combatting pathogens and are thought to shape the host’s GM. However, despite this - a...
Chromosomal inversions frequently underlie major phenotypic variation maintained by divergent selection within and between sexes. Here we examine whether and how intralocus conflicts contribute to balancing selection stabilizing an autosomal inversion polymorphism in the ruff Calidris pugnax. In this lekking shorebird, three male mating morphs (Ind...
Telomeres have been advocated to be important markers of biological age in evolutionary and ecological studies. Telomeres usually shorten with age and shortening is frequently associated with environmental stressors and increased subsequent mortality. Telomere lengthening – an apparent increase in telomere length between repeated samples from the s...
Early-life environmental conditions can provide a source of individual variation in life-history strategies and senescence patterns. Conditions experienced in early life can be quantified by measuring telomere length, which can act as a biomarker of survival probability in some species. Here, we investigate whether seasonal changes, weather conditi...
Understanding where genetic variation exists, and how it influences fitness within populations is important from an evolutionary and conservation perspective. Signatures of past selection suggest that pathogen‐mediated balancing selection is a key driver of immunogenetic variation, but studies tracking contemporary evolution are needed to help reso...
SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the greatest recent threats to human health, wellbeing and economic growth. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) of human viruses can be a useful tool for population-scale monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence and epidemiology to help prevent further spread of the disease, particularly w...
This protocol describes a procedure for sequencing the Spike gene of SARS-CoV-2 using short amplicons (146-208bp) with Oxford Nanopore technology (R9.4.1 MinION/GridION Flow Cell). The method has proved to be successful with both clinical RNA samples and degraded wastewater samples. The primers are unique to the SubARTIC method. The library prep pr...
This protocol describes a procedure for sequencing the Spike region of SARS-CoV-2 using short amplicons (146-208bp). The method has proved to successful with both clinical RNA samples and degraded wastewater samples. The primers are unique to this method. The library prep procedure has been heavily adapted from the ncov-2019 sequencing v3 (ARTIC) p...
Offspring of older parents in many species display decreased longevity, a faster ageing rate and lower fecundity than offspring born to younger parents. Biomarkers, such as telomeres, that tend to shorten as individual age, may provide insight into the mechanisms of parental age effects. Parental age could determine telomere length either through i...
Telomeres have been advocated to be important markers of biological age in evolutionary and ecological studies. Telomeres usually shorten with age, and shortening is frequently associated with environmental stressors and increased subsequent mortality. Telomere lengthening – an apparent increase in telomere length between repeated samples from the...
Understanding individual variation in fitness‐related traits requires separating the environmental and genetic determinants. Telomeres are protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that are thought to be a biomarker of senescence as their length predicts mortality risk and reflect the physiological consequences of environmental conditions. The rel...
Individual variation in telomere length is predictive of health and mortality risk across a range of species. However, the relative influence of environmental and genetic variation on individual telomere length in wild populations remains poorly understood. Heritability of telomere length has primarily been calculated using parent–offspring regress...
Offspring from elderly parents often have lower survival due to parental senescence. In cooperatively breeding species, where offspring care is shared between breeders and helpers, the alloparental care provided by helpers is predicted to mitigate the impact of parental senescence on offspring provisioning and, subsequently, offspring survival. We...
Early-life environmental conditions can provide a source of individual variation in life-history strategies and senescence patterns. Conditions experienced in early life can be quantified by measuring telomere length, which can act as a biomarker of survival probability. Here, we investigate whether seasonal changes, weather conditions, and group s...
