We work on how energy, evolution and ecology come together to shape biological systems.

Most of our work is centred on marine organisms: some of us are interested in traditional marine ecology whereas others are evolutionary biologists who just happen to work on marine critters.

Research questions

Our lab has two main questions of interest:

1. Why are life histories the way they are?
2. How do energy flows and life history come together to affect the ecological dynamics of systems?

Information for prospective students and postdocs

Check out the publications page for an indication of the sorts of questions we’re currently asking.

While our group works on a broad range of topics there are some unifying themes. We have a strong emphasis on conceptual problems and quantitative skills so please bear that in mind when considering coming to the group – you should at least be interested in developing these skill sets.

We also have no capacity to ask questions involving molecular biology so check out a different group if you’re more interested in those sorts of things.

Why we (mostly) work on marine invertebrates

From a certain perspective, the majority of animals in the sea are decidedly uncool. Mostly, they don’t have cute little faces, can’t go for help when the boat sinks and aren’t particularly tasty. However, they are some of the most abundant animals on the planet which means that they have evolved all sorts of amazing traits and are very easy to work on.

That’s why we’re interested in marine invertebrates such as bryozoans, ascidians and echinoderms. More specifically, we are interested in using these animals to address fundamental ecological and evolutionary questions. For example, if you have only a limited amount of resources for reproduction, should you produce a lot of little offspring or just a few, big offspring? Which sex should be the most choosy and what determines an organism’s choice of mate? These questions could be answered using elephants or rhinoceros but this would take longer, be very expensive and would inevitably involve some goring. Because of these and goring-unrelated reasons, we answer these questions using marine invertebrates. Fortunately, marine invertebrates turn out to an ideal group to examine some questions that ecologists have been interested in for quite some time.