Information processing at its limits: from the dimmest habitats to the smallest sizes. Ensuring optimal information processing at the limits of size and ambient light is a challenge for technical systems, but has been elegantly solved by animals. The challenge of navigation is similar for animals of all sizes and in both day and night. This project aims to conduct a comparative analysis to identify the consequence of size and light on the information processing capacities for visual navigation. ....Information processing at its limits: from the dimmest habitats to the smallest sizes. Ensuring optimal information processing at the limits of size and ambient light is a challenge for technical systems, but has been elegantly solved by animals. The challenge of navigation is similar for animals of all sizes and in both day and night. This project aims to conduct a comparative analysis to identify the consequence of size and light on the information processing capacities for visual navigation. Outcomes of this project will reveal the behavioural and physiological adaptations needed and the costs associated with navigating in the dimmest of habitats and at the smallest of sizes. Identifying such optimal biological solutions for robust navigation will be relevant for image processing, computer vision and robotics.Read moreRead less
Manipulative mothers and family feuds: evolution of maternal effects under mother-offspring conflict. Can mothers shape the lives of their offspring and their grand-offspring? Can siblings shape the lives of their brothers and sisters? This project will address how mother and offspring strategies affect current and future generations. This is crucial for understanding how mothers will direct and accelerate evolutionary change in our changing world.
The Cape honey bee and the origins of virgin birth. Using honeybees, the aim is to show how a mutation in a single gene creates a new species. This gene causes a shift from sexual to asexual reproduction, allowing workers to clone themselves (virgin birth), thus turning a formerly cooperative species into a social cancer. Observing a real-time speciation event driven by a single gene is an incredibly rare opportunity and enables this project to determine the socio-genetic mechanisms that reduce ....The Cape honey bee and the origins of virgin birth. Using honeybees, the aim is to show how a mutation in a single gene creates a new species. This gene causes a shift from sexual to asexual reproduction, allowing workers to clone themselves (virgin birth), thus turning a formerly cooperative species into a social cancer. Observing a real-time speciation event driven by a single gene is an incredibly rare opportunity and enables this project to determine the socio-genetic mechanisms that reduce gene flow between neighbouring populations and to explain how expression of the gene is regulated. Further, because clonal reproduction often leads to invasiveness in social insects - a dangerous outcome - understanding the origins of virgin birth is also critical to understanding invasiveness.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220100096
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$436,032.00
Summary
Understanding the relationship between the social environment and cognition. The predominant theory for the evolution of intelligence, the social intelligence hypothesis (SIH), posits that within-group social interactions drive cognitive evolution. But the SIH overlooks a major component of social life: interactions with outsiders of the same species. Using a unique combination of meta-analytical and experimental approaches, the DECRA project will test the predictions of an expanded SIH, incorpo ....Understanding the relationship between the social environment and cognition. The predominant theory for the evolution of intelligence, the social intelligence hypothesis (SIH), posits that within-group social interactions drive cognitive evolution. But the SIH overlooks a major component of social life: interactions with outsiders of the same species. Using a unique combination of meta-analytical and experimental approaches, the DECRA project will test the predictions of an expanded SIH, incorporating the “Napoleonic” cognitive challenges posed by outsiders. The expected outcome is to gain a new understanding of which factors govern cognitive evolution – one of the longest-running debates in evolutionary biology.Read moreRead less
Transgenerational Consequences of Different Environmental Experiences. The project aims to deliver an integrative overview of behavioural, evolutionary and environmental epigenetics. In particular, by studying why stress-related experiences of organisms (e.g. exposure to toxins) can be passed onto the future generations regardless of its seemingly fitness-reducing impacts. It also aims to test if the seemingly beneficial effect of non-stress related experiences (e.g. environmental enrichment) ca ....Transgenerational Consequences of Different Environmental Experiences. The project aims to deliver an integrative overview of behavioural, evolutionary and environmental epigenetics. In particular, by studying why stress-related experiences of organisms (e.g. exposure to toxins) can be passed onto the future generations regardless of its seemingly fitness-reducing impacts. It also aims to test if the seemingly beneficial effect of non-stress related experiences (e.g. environmental enrichment) can be inherited transgenerationally. This project involves both research synthesis (e.g. meta-analysis) and experiments on zebrafish employing cutting-edge statistical, computational and molecular methods along with behavioural assays. Also, the outcomes of the synthesis are expected to guide future work in the field. Read moreRead less
The physiological mechanisms underlying animal group dynamics. The project aims to provide novel insights into how individual differences in muscle biomechanics and metabolism constrain group assemblages, and the extent to which these constraints can cause fission and fusion of populations in changing environments. This research is significant because most ecological and evolutionary processes and their management occur at the level of groups. The project expects to yield a theoretical model cal ....The physiological mechanisms underlying animal group dynamics. The project aims to provide novel insights into how individual differences in muscle biomechanics and metabolism constrain group assemblages, and the extent to which these constraints can cause fission and fusion of populations in changing environments. This research is significant because most ecological and evolutionary processes and their management occur at the level of groups. The project expects to yield a theoretical model calibrated against empirical data to predict group dynamics of natural populations in changing environments, and of human crowds as diseases and lifestyle change physiological capacities.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120100214
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Re-evaluating evolution by examining developmental plasticity in response to the social environment. Our understanding of trait evolution is derived from our assumption that traits are a signal of male quality as they are costly to produce. The project will integrate this concept with a new theory stating that males shift their development to exploit the weaknesses of rivals; thereby leading to a more holistic understanding of evolution.
Sex chromosomes and speciation: chromosome inversion and the large Z-effect. This project aims to understand the divergence of species and the importance of two genomic features of often disproportionately large effect between young taxa – the sex chromosomes, and chromosome inversions. The research will integrate genomics and transcriptomics with the study of traits closely aligned to speciation in birds – song, colour, and sperm morphology and protein composition. The project will provide sign ....Sex chromosomes and speciation: chromosome inversion and the large Z-effect. This project aims to understand the divergence of species and the importance of two genomic features of often disproportionately large effect between young taxa – the sex chromosomes, and chromosome inversions. The research will integrate genomics and transcriptomics with the study of traits closely aligned to speciation in birds – song, colour, and sperm morphology and protein composition. The project will provide significant benefits such as enhancing Australia’s strength in the field of evolutionary biology.Read moreRead less
Adaptive plasticity and evolution: linking the genotype and the environment to understand phenotypic evolution and expression. Different environmental signals alter when and where specific genes are expressed, thereby altering the phenotype. This project will examine the differences in the timing and use of genes in response to cues of competition that result in differences between the sexes. This will increase our understanding of the role of genes in sexual evolution.
A life-course approach to the nutrition-lifespan-reproduction nexus. This project aims to address the “cost of reproduction”, where lifespan and fecundity are negatively correlated. Bringing together nutritional geometry and evolutionary theory, to the project will produce an over-arching theory of why animals have finite lifespans and limited reproductive capacity. Benefits include developing research strategies for managing the nexus between diet, reproduction and lifespan in animals and human ....A life-course approach to the nutrition-lifespan-reproduction nexus. This project aims to address the “cost of reproduction”, where lifespan and fecundity are negatively correlated. Bringing together nutritional geometry and evolutionary theory, to the project will produce an over-arching theory of why animals have finite lifespans and limited reproductive capacity. Benefits include developing research strategies for managing the nexus between diet, reproduction and lifespan in animals and humans, placing Australia at the forefront of a paradigm shift in understanding the relationship between diet, reproduction and lifespan.Read moreRead less