I received my PhD from Nottingham University in 1986 and held a series of postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Liverpool until 1995 when I moved to UWA. I received an ARC Federation Fellowship in 2004 and was elected to the Australian Academy in 2009. I am Editor of Advances in the Study of Behavior, and a Research Adjunct at the Western Australian Museum.

My research uses both vertebrates and invertebrates to test the predictions and assumptions of theoretical models of sexual selection and life history evolution.

Research in my lab is focussed on five areas: i) sperm competition and paternal effects mediated via seminal fluid; ii) the evolution of animal genitalia; iii) natural and sexual selection acting on insect cuticular lipids; and iv) the effects of diet on reproductive health; v) the potential for sexual selection to promote population fitness. Collectively, these research programs seek to determine the direction and strength of selection acting on male and female reproductive strategies, and on the morphological and life history traits that contribute to fitness, from the whole organism to its gametes. My lab currently hosts collaborative research programs involving 4 PhD students and 2 postdoctoral researchers, and has hosted research fellows from Sweden, Finland, Spain, Switzerland, the US and the UK.

Opportunities are available for researchers at all levels, and I encourage interested individuals to contact me directly.

Lab Members

Postdocs

Yong Zhi Foo: Effects of macro- and micro- nutrients on male fertility

Jeremy Wilson: Conservation systematics and rapid taxonomy of Australia's most diverse genus of trapdoor spiders (Aname)

PhD students

Andrea Piccinini: The Australian wishbone spiders (Aname) in the Northern Jarrah Forest: sexual selection, diversification, and behavioural insights in a highly diverse mygalomorph spider genus

Boikhutso Lerato Rapalai: The adaptive potential of small, fragmented populations of a lizard inhabiting a rapidly changing environment

Alan Sabuna: Anthropogenic impacts on insect reproduction and their consequences for declining insect abundance

Rhiannon Foster: Phenotypic and genetic variation in maternal provisioning and ecosystem function traits in the dung beetle Onthophagus taurus (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)

Harriet O'Roarty: The impact of nutrition on male and female life history traits in a lepidopteran pest, Plodia interpunctella

Kim Wong: How ants think: The role of cognition, individual, and social learning on complex behaviour in Western Australian ants (Hymenoptera)

Avantica Deep Sharma: Competition among females and males in West Australian magpies

Jackson Rendall: Conservation genomics and climate adaptation in the Idiosoma nigrum group trapdoor spiders

Adjunct Research Associates

Dr Paco Garcia Gonzalez (Doñana Biological Station - CSIC)

Professor Mark Harvey (Western Australian Museum)

Current Funding

ARC Discovery Project (2022-2024). Choosing to persist: sexual selection in the wild

ABRS  (2022-2024) Conservation systematics and rapid taxonomy of Australia's most diverse genus of trapdoor spiders (Aname)

ARC Discovery Project (2025-2027) Life on the rocks: rapid adaptation in the wild