Our research encompasses a range of topics related to animal behaviour and evolution; particularly animal social learning, innovation and intelligence; niche construction, inclusive inheritance, and the extended evolutionary synthesis; and human evolution, cultural evolution, and gene-culture coevolution. We integrate rigorous laboratory experimentation with sophisticated statistical and theoretical approaches, including the development of new methods.

Animal social learning, innovation and intelligence

Animals learn from others selectively, according to functional rules called ‘social learning strategies’. We investigate such strategies through experimental studies in monkeys, birds and fishes, and through evolutionary game theory modelling. We also use experimental studies of animals, including monkeys, birds and fishes, combined with mathematical methods, to determine where animals acquire behaviour through social learning, and how novel traits spread through populations. We conduct comparative statistical analyses exploring the causes of the large primate brain and the evolution of intelligence. We have found that social learning, innovation and tool use all co-vary with primate relative brain size and may have been drivers of brain evolution.

Niche construction, inclusive inheritance and the extended evolutionary synthesis

The activities of organisms can modify selective pressures and affect subsequent evolution. We investigate the effects of this niche construction using comparative phylogenetic methods, theoretical population genetics modelling and through experimental analyses. We are also exploring the evolutionary consequences of extra-genetic forms of inheritance, including cultural inheritance and ecological inheritance, as well as phenotypic plasticity, using experimental and mathematical approaches. The recognition of niche construction as an evolutionary process that imposes biases on selection, as well as important roles for extra-genetic forms of inheritance and of phenotypes (e.g. plasticity-first) in evolution, are central concepts in the emerging extended evolutionary synthesis.

Human evolution, particularly the evolution of cognition

We study the evolution of social learning, teaching, language, cooperation and cumulative culture through a combination of mathematical modelling and experimental research. Our laboratory’s research into the evolution of cognition is summarised in Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind.

Funders

Our research is well supported by grants and fellowships from the John Templeton Foundation, ERC, BBSRC, NERC, the EU, The Royal Society, and the AHRC. The final reports of all of our previous research council funded projects have been graded ‘A’ for excellent value for money.

Professor Kevin Lala
Principal investigator
[email] [St Andrews University profile]

Kevin Lala is Professor of Behavioural and Evolutionary Biology at the University of St Andrews, where he is a member of the Centre for Biological Diversity, the Centre for Social learning and Cognitive Evolution, the Institute for Behavioural and Neural Sciences, and the Scottish Primate Research Group. After completing his PhD at University College London, Kevin held a Human Frontier Science Programme fellowship at UC Berkeley, followed by BBSRC and Royal Society University Research fellowships at the University of Cambridge, before moving to St Andrews in 2002. He has published over 230 scientific articles and 13 books on a wide range of topics related to animal behaviour and evolution, particularly social learning, cultural evolution and niche construction. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Society of Biology, and the recipient of both an ERC Advanced Grant and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

Dr Kelly Robinson
Associate Lecturer
[email] [website] [St Andrews University profile]

Kelly Robinson is interested in how behaviour, physiological systems and energetics interact to impact on individual fitness and survival. She investigates how hormones and neuropeptides influence behavioural expression and energetics, from a whole organism to cellular level. Much of her research has focused on oxytocin and its role in maternal and social behaviour. She has studied marine mammal species, principally the grey seal, for much of her career to date, and is expanding her research to include terrestrial animal species and humans. Kelly completed her PhD at the University of St Andrews in 2014 and did a three year post-doc at the Scottish Oceans Institute before taking one year of maternity leave. She has joined the Laland Lab as a part time associate lecturer in animal behaviour and evolution.

Dr Mike Webster
Lecturer
[email] [website] [St Andrews University profile]

Mike Webster is interested in the functions and evolution of group living in animals. He investigates how groups are organised, how animals interact and acquire information from one another, and how individual behaviour affects and is affected by that of the group. For the most part he uses shoaling fishes and crustaceans as study systems for understanding more general aspects of social behaviour. After completing his PhD at the University of Leicester in 2007, Mike moved to the University of St Andrews, joining the Laland Lab as a post-doc. He is now a lecturer in behavioural and evolutionary biology.

Sven Kasser
PhD Student
[email] [website]

Sven Kasser is a PhD student in Evolutionary Biology under the supervision of Prof Kevin Laland (St Andrews) and Prof Laura Fortunato (Oxford). A keen inter disciplinarian, he is interested in quantifying the influence of cultural practices on shaping geographical patterns of human genetic variation, employing a gene-culture co-evolutionary framework. Before joining the Laland Lab, he completed an MSc in Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a MA in Psychology & Economics at the University of Edinburgh.

Lucas Mathieu
PhD Student
[email] [website]