INSECT EVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGY
We study insect adaptations.
One of our big goals is to understand how evolutionary conflicts of interest shape animal lives. We use insects to investigate how conflict between mates, family members and social partners influences adaptation - in behaviour, morphology, life history, gene expression and molecular phenotypes.
Another main goal is to find out how warming temperatures affect insect behaviour, reproduction and life history.
We're part of the Department of Biology at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish on Canada's east coast.
Currently recruiting! Please get in touch about funded studentships and about applying for postdoctoral funding.
PEOPLE
PhD student
Rachel is studying how UK ladybirds cope with the dual challenges of introduced species and climate change. Rachel is funded by the ARIES DTP in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society and is co-supervised by Aldina Franco and Andrew Salisbury.
MABEL SYDNEY
PhD student
Mabel is studying sexual conflict and diet preference in fruit flies. Mabel is funded by the ARIES DTP and is co-supervised by Tracey Chapman.
SOUMYA PANYAM
Co-supervised
PhD student
Soumya is studying sexual conflict in fruit flies in Pau Carazo's group at the University of Valencia. Her previous summer project looked at how male fruit flies express their genes differently in response to interacting with kin and with females, part of her Integrated Masters degree at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali.
ALUMNI
PhD student
Dani studied the evolutionary ecology of aggression in fruit flies, funded by the BBSRC Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP at the U of Oxford and co-supervised by Stuart Wigby.
YASMIN AHMED
MSci student
Yasmin studied vibrational signalling behaviour during aggressive contests between male fruit flies.
LUKE FARNISH
MSc student
Luke used citizen science data to tackle the question of how UK ladybird phenology has changed in recent decades. Luke was co-supervised by Prof Helen Roy.
BOYANG HU
MSc Statistics
Boyang studied approaches to analyzing behavioural data on interactions between two individuals for her MSc in Statistical Science at the U of Oxford, cosupervised by Christl Donnelly.
BOUKE MINK
MSc Molecular Medicine
Bouke's project asked whether male fruit flies can gain from influencing female diet choice.
AMALIA HERRERA GRAU
Undergraduate student
Lia studied the consequences of mating for diet choice in male fruit flies.
GONÇALO FARIA
Affiliated Postdoctoral Research Fellow
As a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Gonçalo investigated how sexual selection and kin selection interact during evolution, using mathematical theory.
REBECCA ROGERS
Undergraduate student
Rebecca studied sexual coevolution in water striders for her final year project.
ELLIE JARVIS
UNIQ+ project student
Ellie studied diet choice in drosophilids for her summer lab project.
SAM EDWARDS
Research assistant
Sam has moved on to a PhD at the University of Copenhagen, but is still involved in writing a manuscript about his studies of signalling behaviour in water striders.
RESEARCH
EVOLUTIONARY CONFLICT OVER ANIMAL NUTRITION AND DIET CHOICE
We want to understand how mating impacts nutritional state, and how evolutionary conflict shapes maternal diet choice and nutrition. We are investigating responses to diet in whole-organism phenotypes and molecular metabolomic phenotypes. We're asking these questions using fruit flies.
SEXUAL CONFLICT IN ECOLOGICAL CONTEXT
We are studying how ecological variation influences a sexual arms race in water striders.
JOIN THE LAB
I'm always happy to hear from those interested in joining the lab, as MSc or PhD student, postdoctoral fellows or undergraduates.
Projects are available to study:
- sexual arms races in water striders
- effects of warming temperatures on ladybugs and other insects
- other topics in evolutionary ecology where I can provide useful supervision. Let's chat!
Funding is already available for some topics. For others, let's discuss potential funding sources, such as NSERC.
I'm grateful to our funders, the NSERC Discovery Program and Nova Scotia Museums.
Nova Scotia is an amazing place to live and work!
Live minutes from beaches. Seafood, live music, hiking, canoeing, wildlife and stunning scenery.
A low cost of living.
Antigonish is a small cute coastal town, close to Cape Breton's Cabot Trail.
PUBLICATIONS
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NEWS
MAY 2023
Welcome to Grace and Kipp, joining the water strider team for the summer!
FEB 2023
Congratulations to Bouke on completing his MSc!
JAN 2023
New paper out in Evolution on the experimental evolution of condition-dependence. Open access at https://academic.oup.com/evolut/article/77/3/776/6988463
JAN 2023
New chapter out exploring the use of sexual selection and sexual conflict theory to understanding human behaviour, with co-author Tracey Chapman:
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/45515/chapter-abstract/393445639?redirectedFrom=fulltext
JULY 2022
A big move: from the University of East Anglia in Norwich to St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada.
MARCH 2022
Ben Hopkins and I published a review of the biology of sex peptide, a seminal protein produced by male fruit flies with a remarkable slew of effects on females. Open access at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12849
CONGRATULATIONS, YASMIN!
August 2021
Congratulations to Yasmin, who finished her MSci and received a 1st, woohoo! Her project was titled 'Investigating vibrational signalling during male-male aggression in Drosophila melanogaster.'
ESCAPING THE CHOOSINESS TRAP
June 2021
Ben Hopkins and I wrote a News & Views about a terrific new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, by Philip Kohlmeier, Jean-Christophe Billeter & colleagues. How can females avoid the choosiness trap? They need to be choosy enough to find the most superior males around, yet not set their standards so high that they reject all suitors. Our News & Views summary is available here - do email me for a pdf if it's paywalled for you.
HANGRY FRUIT FLIES: OUR NEW PAPER IS OUT
June 2021
Fruit flies: they're just like us. In this paper, the second from Dani's PhD, we show that being deprived of food makes male fruit flies more aggressive to each other. The paper is fully open access in Animal Behaviour here.
Dani was interviewed about it on BBC Breakfast TV, and it was covered in news outlets including these ones:
New Scientist
and in science news for kids at CBBC Newsround
CONGRATULATIONS DR EDMUNDS!
18 March 2021
Very big congratulations to Dani, who defended her PhD! She got the most minor of minor corrections.
CEEC TWITTER CONFERENCE TALK
24 March 2021
I gave a twitter talk (my first!) as part of UEA's Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation's twitter conference. I covered our recent work on aggression: its plasticity, microevolution and macroevolution
https://twitter.com/jennyperry/status/1374737449105113091
NEW PAPER: EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION OF AGGRESSION
17 March 2021
First paper from Dani's PhD! How are male and female aggression shaped by the intensity of local competition? We evolved flies under male-biased, female-biased, or equal sex ratios, and found that environments with more competition within a sex led to the evolution of more frequent aggression displayed by that sex. Open access publication at https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.3053
TWO STUDENTS JOIN THE GROUP
September 2020
Yasmin Ahmed and Rachel Loos-Bennett have joined the group. I'm super excited to work with them!
CONGRATULATIONS LUKE!
August 2020
Luke successfully presented his MSc research and completed his dissertation. He documented shifts in phenology in UK ladybirds over recent decades in ways consistent with the UK's changing climate.
NEW PAPER: SEX, MATING AND ANXIETY
4 July 2020
‘Sex peptide’ – a male seminal protein in fruit flies – has big effects on many aspects of female behaviour, including things like aggression, sleep and memory formation. We wondered if sex peptide also regulates female anxiety. Fruit flies are a useful model for studying anxiety, so understanding how male and female anxiety is regulated in these animals might help us understand human anxiety and why anxiety is more common in women than in men.
Jess Thomson tackled this question for her undergraduate project. She used a standard assay of anxious behaviour: the extent to which individuals stick to the perimeter when they’re moving around their environment. It turns out that anxious individuals are more likely do this, in flies, rodents, humans and other animals. In our study, we found no evidence that males and females differed in their anxious behaviour, and no evidence that is influenced by either mating or sex peptide.
These results tell us that anxiety is not part of the big shift in behaviour that occurs after mating in female fruit flies. They also tell us that we need a different animal model to study sex differences in anxiety.
Fully open access in Animal Behaviour!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347220301391
PHD PROJECT AVAILABLE
Application deadline: 7 Jan 2020 (noon)
We've got a funded PhD position available through the ARIES DTP.
How do UK ladybirds respond to the double whammy of invasive ladybirds + climate change? Come and help find the answers.
A CASE partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society and the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology, with cosupervision by Dr. Andrew Salibury (who gets credit for this nice photo) and Prof. Helen Roy.
Details at https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BVV193/phd-studentship-native-and-invasive-ladybirds-in-a-changing-uk-climate-perry_ubio20aries
Informal enquiries are very welcome!
BLOG POST: SUMMER IN THE FLY LAB
17 Oct 2019
It was super hosting UNIQ+ student Ellie Jarvis for her project on flies, mating and diet. She's written a blog post about her summer of fun with flies.
WE ARE MOVING!
15 Sep 2019
Our lab is moving to the School of Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia!
We'll be based there from Nov 1st, in what is officially one of the UK's most livable and irresistible cities.
CONGRATULATIONS TO BOYANG!
9 Sep 2019
Boyang submitted her MSc report evaluating modelling approaches for dyadic contest data.
FLY LAB SUMMER 2019
18 July 2019
The Oxford Zoology Fly Lab, jointly run with co-conspirator Stu Wigby, of summer 2019. Such a wonderful bunch.
Left to right: Dani, Rachel, Lucy, Ellie J., Stu, Irem, Ben, Ellie B., Jinlin, Thomas & Jen
TWO NEW STUDENTS JOIN THE GROUP
1 July 2019
A gigantic welcome to two new students.
Boyang Hu is completing her MSc in applied statistics and is working out robust ways to analyze dyadic contest data. Boyang is cosupervised by Christl Donnelly.
Ellie Jarvis is here for a summer research project as part of the UNIQ+ programme. Ellie is studying diet choice in several drosophilids.
NEW SEASON, NEW STUDENTS
15 May 2019
A big enthusiastic welcome to Austin, Joe, Julia and Rebecca, joining the lab for their undergraduate projects.
PHD PROJECT AVAILABLE
Application deadline 28 May 2019
How do UK ladybirds respond to the double whammy of invasive ladybirds + climate change? PhD position available - come and help find the answers.
A CASE partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society and the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology, with cosupervision by Dr. Andrew Salibury and Prof. Helen Roy.
Informal enquiries welcome - email Jen
NEW PAPER OUT
January 2019
Our new paper, led by Juliano Morimoto and Grant McDonald, is out in Nature Communications here. Press release here.
In this study, we tested the idea that a higher female mating rate changes how sexual selection acts on males. We used fruit flies where females were genetically engineered to mate more often, such that we could experimentally control mating rate. We found that sexual selection was indeed changed by how often females mated. When they mated more, selection shifted to be stronger on post-copulatory traits that help males achieve fertilization, and weaker on pre-copulatory traits that help males achieve mating.
PHD PROJECTS AVAILABLE
Application deadline 25 Jan 2019
Three projects available. Please get in touch to discuss other projects of mutual interest.
(1) Evolutionary Conflict Over Maternal Diet
Explore the extent of evolutionary conflict between females, males and offspring over maternal diet, and the consequences of conflict for what mothers eat.
Cosupervised by Stuart Wigby.
(2) Food, Sex and the Metabolome
This project will investigate how diet composition and mating rate interact to affect molecular nutritional condition, measured through metabolomic profiling.
Cosupervised by Stuart Wigby.
(3) Native and Invasive Ladybirds in a Changing U.K. Climate
This studentship will investigate effects of climate change on native ladybird behaviour and physiology, and how these effects impact interactions with the invasive Harlequin ladybird.
A CASE partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society and the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology, with cosupervision by Dr. Andrew Salibury and Prof. Helen Roy.
SAM EDWARDS JOINS THE GROUP
January 2019
Sam will examine how water striders send and receive signals through the water surface.
CONTACT INFO
Department of Biology
St Francis Xavier University
P.O. Box 5000
Antigonish, NS B2G 2W5 Canada
jperry [at] stfx.ca
