Dr David Shuker (Lecturer)
My research interests focus on insect behavioural ecology, especially the evolution of insect reproductive behaviour.
The conceptual basis for my amazement with insects and their sex lives is how different evolutionary processes interact to produce the diversity of organisms we see around us. Put simply, how does evolution work?
I joined the University of St Andrews in the beginning of 2009 and the lab is currently split between Edinburgh and St Andrews.
Rebekah Watt (NERC PhD student)
Rebekah is the lab genetics expert, and she is using next-gen sequencing technologies to explore the genomic basis of female receptivity in Nasonia wasps. Rebekah does the wasp work in St Andrews, and the genomics in Edinburgh.
Emily Burdfield-Steel (NERC PhD student)
Emily is studying reproductive behaviour in lygaeid seed bugs, with a particular focus on inter-specific mating interactions and conflicts ("reproductive interference"). For a brief introduction to reproductive interference, see her recent "Quick Guide" in Current Biology.
Liam Dougherty (NERC PhD student)
Liam has just started his PhD with us. He'll be exploring context-dependent reproductive decision-making in lygaeid seed bugs.
Previous group members
Dr Anna Auld (nee Moynihan; ex-PhD student)
Anna has just defended her thesis exploring the evolutionary consequences of male mating behaviour on sex allocation in the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis. Well done Anna! And good luck in the US!
Dr Gethin Evans (ex-PhD student, currently a field assistant at University of Edinburgh)
His research addressed within- and between-species variation in the costs of benefits of mating in Lygaeus seed bugs.
Dr Laura Ross (ex-PhD student, currently a post-doc fellow at University of Oxford)
Laura successfully defended her thesis on sex allocation and genomic conflicts in mealybugs at the end of 2010. Supported by a Darwin Fellowship she has spent a year at UMASS-Amherst, and now she is back in the UK, with a prestigious Royal Society Newton Fellowship at the University of Oxford.
Other previous folks in the lab include Bart Pannebakker (post-doc, now an independent fellow in Groningen), Max Burton (PhD student, now post-doc in Oxford) and Ed Sykes (PhD student, now at the Science Media Centre in London).