Research

Our groups main research focuses on understanding broad patterns in ecology and evolution. The broad nature of our reserch is often through the lens of body size including projects relating size and ecology to life history stratagies, time perception and venom potency. Our research also extends to using macroecological tools foe more applied questions, including developing models of trophic enricmnet factrs for stable istope analysis and more recently investigating the social and ecologicaly drivers behind de-extinction projects. See below for more detailed information on ongoing projects.

 

 

Patterns in life history strategies

The life history stratagy of a species is fundamental to understanding its ecology, evolution and how to implement conservation actions. Our research on the topic has rangeed from mapping out how life histroy stratagies vary across the animal and plant Kingdoms (Kelly et al 2021, Healy et al 2019) and how differnet ecologies and exteinction risks are associated with theese stratagies.

Current ongoing research on this topic includes IRC postgradute Amy Duclaux's investigation into the link between species with sexually selected traits, such as brightly coloured males, and fast paced life history stratagies and how these species may be under increased conservation risk.

 

 

Venamos represnt a fantastic study system to understand the evolution of predatory traits.
Not only can we quantify the abilties of a venom to subdue a prey item the abilties of venoms to do this various enrmously across the animal Kingdom, making it an ideal system to study macroecological patterns.

In our group we are intrested in studying how ecological and physiological traits are associated with venom production and potency and testing the importance of macroecological patterns relating to body size, and predator-prey dynamics (Healy et al 2019, Lyons et al 2020).

Current IRC Postgradute Keith Lyons is currently working on the ecological drivers of venom potency and yeild in spiders.

 

 

Scavenging in theropod dinosaurs

The enormous size and diversity of theropod dinosaurs raise many questions of how they survived in a world that bears little comparison to todays ecosystems. For example, what foraging behaviours must they have performed to meet their enormous energetic demands. One strategy theropods may have utilised is facultative scavenging.

In this project I used estimates derived from metabolic theory and an agent-based modelling approach to replicate theropods foraging in a range of potential environments to test the potential importance of scavenging in theropods. My research in this area has to date shown that facultative scavenging behaviours not only provide a significant resource in Mesozoic environments but, contrary to current thinking, such scavenging is most efficient at intermediate body sizes of around half a ton.These results mean that larger adult forms of Tyrannosaurus rex and its relatives were certainly not scavengers and more likely to have relied on active predation while other species such as Dilophosaurs and juvenile Tyrannosaurs were likely to have been effective scavengers, much like modern hyenas.

I am also interested in using this approach to better understand how carcass availability and environmental changes, such as predicted from global warming, will influence the efficiency of scavenging foraging strategies.

 

 

Stable isotopes analysis

Stable isotopes analysis is an invaluable tool to measure species diets and trophic ecology. I am interested in developing this tool, in particular focusing on improving the estimation of required parameters for this tool such as discrimination factors.

Discrimination factors are the change in the ratio of stable isotope due to processes such as digestion. Estimating these changes can be difficult to measure and are species specific meaning taxa level estimates are often the only available estimate. My current project in this area is developing the SIDER package link, a Bayesian inference approach that estimates species specific discrimination factors. This R package is available on my GitHub page with a pre-print available on PeerJ (link to paper).

I am also interested in understanding how different physiological processes change these discrimination factors and also in using stable isotopes to infer different foraging strategies such as scavenging.

 

 

Ecology and evolution of temporal information processing

 

The world isn’t always what it seems. The uniform yellow of a flower to us is a complex patterned landing strip to a bee and the passing blur of a bee to us is seen as a clear trajectory to some of its waiting predators. How animals observe and perceive change, such as motion and in a sense time is a fundamental way we processing the environment in which we live. Although time may seem continuous it observed as a series of still pictures taken over the duration of an event. Such still images are costly for brains and other sensory systems to capture and process leading to species taking an economic view of seeing the world.

My research is interested in understanding when an animal should invest or reduce the ability to see the world at different speeds. In particular I am interested in understanding the role of body size and metabolic rate on Critical Flicker fusion, a measure of temporal information processing similar to camera shutter speed, across species.

So far I have used comparative methods to show that body size and metabolic rate influence the speed at which animals process the world. Future direction in this research area include the use of neural networks to better understand the evolution of this trade-off and how particular foraging strategies and ecologies may affect its evolution.

 

 

Ecological stability

The stability of ecological systems is infamously difficult to predict despite being the bedrock of theoretical ecology for several decades. One of the reasons for the difficulty in predicting such systems is their complex nature and the challenges associated in measuring and testing them. However in the last decade computational techniques and power has allowed for more exploration of the fundamental components that affect the stability and structure of complex ecosystems.

I have collaborated with this work as part of a UK NERC/BESS Tansley Working Group award. This resulted in two paper in Ecology letters with the second publication (Donohue et al 2016) also awarded the Innovations in Sustainability Award from ESA in 2017.