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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. 

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Currently recruiting! Undergraduate honours and directed studies project are available.
Please get in touch about potential sources of funding for graduate studentships and postdoctoral funding.

PEOPLE

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Assistant Professor

How does evolutionary conflict shape animal phenotypes?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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PhD student

Charlotte is studying sexual conflict in water striders.

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SHANNON WALLACE

NSERC Undergraduate researcher

Shannon is studying water strider population genetics.

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Research assistant

Haley is assisting with sampling water striders across the Maritimes.

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EMILLIE MURDOCK

Research assistant

Emillie Murdock just finished her first year as a science undergraduate student at StFX and hopes to major in Biology. She is helping lab members to research water striders. Emillie aims to attend Medical School post StFX and is driven to have an impact within the Health Care system. 

ALUMNI

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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.

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YASMIN AHMED

MSci student

Yasmin studied vibrational signalling behaviour during aggressive contests between male fruit flies.

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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.

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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.

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BOUKE MINK

MSc Molecular Medicine

Bouke's project asked whether male fruit flies can gain from influencing female diet choice.

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AMALIA HERRERA GRAU

Undergraduate student

Lia studied the consequences of mating for diet choice in male fruit flies.

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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.

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REBECCA ROGERS

Undergraduate student

Rebecca studied sexual coevolution in water striders for her final year project.

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ELLIE JARVIS

UNIQ+ project student

Ellie studied diet choice in drosophilids for her summer lab project.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

NEWS

JUN 2024

First paper from Mabel's PhD is now online in Animal Behaviour:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347224001453

Mabel used fruit flies to ask whether mating multiple times changes what males choose to eat.

MAY 2024

The 2024 water strider field season is underway!

Shannon Wallace joins the lab as an NSERC-funded research student, studying population genetic divergence in water striders.

Emillie Murdock is joining us as a research assistant.

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JAN 2024

A big welcome to two new lab members!

 

Charlotte Freydier is starting her PhD on sexual conflict in water striders.

Haley Ehler is joining the lab for a directed studies project on cold tolerance in the ladybug Hippodamia convergens.

SEP 2023

Welcome to Evelyn, joining the lab for a directed studies project on life history and sexual conflict in water striders.

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.'

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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.

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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

Daily Mail

Sky News

The Independent


and in science news for kids at CBBC Newsround

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CONGRATULATIONS DR EDMUNDS!

18 March 2021

Very big congratulations to Dani, who defended her PhD! She got the most minor of minor corrections.

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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

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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

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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!

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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.

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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

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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!

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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.

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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.

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CONGRATULATIONS TO BOYANG!

9 Sep 2019

Boyang submitted her MSc report evaluating modelling approaches for dyadic contest data.

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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

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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.

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NEW SEASON, NEW STUDENTS

15 May 2019

A big enthusiastic welcome to Austin, Joe, Julia and Rebecca, joining the lab for their undergraduate projects.

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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.

Details at https://www.environmental-research.ox.ac.uk/case-studentships/industrial-case-projects-available-for-2019-entry/native-and-invasive-ladybirds-in-a-changing-u-k-climate/

Informal enquiries welcome - email Jen

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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.

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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.

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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

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