In order to maximise the fitness payoffs of social interactions, individuals must behave appropriately towards one another. In most cases, this depends on an ability to gather information about other individuals - for example, if individuals can recognise kin, they can avoid costly inbreeding, while information about a rival's fighting ability can allow individuals to avoid costly aggression. My research focuses on understanding the conditions that favour social interactions - either helping or harming others - and the information-gathering strategies that underpin these interactions. Specific topics that could be covered in a DPhil project include (i) exploring decision-making during multi-party aggressive interactions using experiments with captive fish populations and (ii) exploring variation in kin recognition cues and templates across species using comparative analysis. I would also be happy to discuss other ideas for projects on fish social behaviour or cross-species variation in social behaviour.
Qualification & experiences
Extensive undergraduate teaching experience across all four years of MBiol degree, including tutorials, lectures, practical teaching, field courses and supervision of 4th year research projects. Supervision of three DPhil students at Oxford (one ongoing, two now graduated)
