Our research focuses on the evolution and ecology of phenotypic plasticity, particularly in reproductive strategies. When is plasticity adaptive, how does it evolve in different environments, and does it allow populations to track or adapt to changing environments? Topics of interest include the annual timing of reproduction in response to climate, division of resources among sons and daughters, temperature-dependent embryonic development, thermal biology under different climates, and alterations in behavior and reproduction under parasitic infection. We employ theoretical and empirical approaches to explore these questions, and focus on vertebrate study organisms. Our main research foci are in the study of sex allocation in mammals, temperature-dependent sex determination and thermal biology.
News
May 2023 Claudia Crowther has submitted an excellent Ph.D. thesis! And now she's off to Michigan State University for a postdoctoral research position.
November 2020 Gracie Liu's herculean honours work is published! Read it to understand how maternal stress hormones, body condition and thermal condition interact to influence offspring traits in jacky dragons.
May 2019 Jacky dragon thermal biology differs across elevation - read Mitch Hodgson's honours work in Journal of Thermal Biology.