JUN 2023 Our new paper in The Journal of Evolutionary Biology shows how social group composition (small or large flies, or a mix) changes the importance of last male sperm precedence in shaping sexual selection FEB 2023 Our new paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution unifies substances such as ejaculate, eggs, and milk under the umbrella concept of "socially transmitted materials"
2022
OCT 2022 Welcome to Ana and Lily! Who join the lab as NERC funded PhD students, to study diet and thermal limits, and cryptic female choice, respectively. Check out their biographies over on the People page. SEP 2022 Our new review paper in eLife explores the role of lipids from biochemical mechanisms and molecular cell biology to evolution and nutritional ecology
JAN 2022 Welcome to Mischa, Andy and Jola! Who have all recently joined the lab, as a PhD student, postdoc and technician respectively. Check out their biographies over on the People page.
2021
JUNE 2021 Hangry flies! New work, led by Dani Edmunds, shows that male Drosophila get more aggressive when food deprived. Check out the paper in Animal Behaviour here, and news coverage over on the media page!
APR 2021 Former PhD student, Dr Juliano Morimoto is a winner of the 2021 Royal Entomological Society's award which is given for a "contribution to entomological science that is judged to be outstanding or exemplary". Nice one Ju, congrats!
JAN 2021 Our latest paper in shows how a the seminal fluid protein sex peptide has an additional function in the packaging of seminal material. It might even be its original evolutionary function. Read more in PNAS here
2020
OCT 2020 Our new review on Drosophila seminal fluid proteins and post-copulatory sexual selection is out now, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Read here
JULY 2020 6 years in the making, our new paper in PNAS dissects the roles of seminal fluid versus sperm in mediating reproductive ageing in males. We also found that the decline can be postponed – read here!
APR 2020 When do female flies get aggressive after mating? Is it the same for different strains? Does machine learning work for scoring fly female aggression? See our new paper to get the answers!
MAR 2020 Our new paper in Roy Soc Open Sci identifies odd looking 'presences' (for want of a better word) in the spermathecal ducts of some female flies. They seem to associate with sperm competition outcomes – see what you think!
FEB 2020 Dresden here we come! In February I'm heading to the Technische Universität Dresden for 6 months as a Dresden Senior Fellow, to set up new collaborations with Klaus Reinhard.
2019
NOV 2019 Another PNAS paper, again led by Ben Hopkins, which shows how activity of Drosophila male prostate-like secondary cells influences the seminal proteome & sperm dynamics in the female.
AUG 2019 Our PNAS paper, led by Ben Hopkins, shows how males can alter their sperm and seminal fluid proteins differently in response to rival males. Complete with explanatory video! MAR 2019 Our Mol Cell Proteomics paper, led by Irem Sepil, uses a novel quantitative proteomics method to identify new Drosophila seminal proteins.
JAN 2019 Our Nat Comms paper shows how polyandry affects sexual selection on males – great work from Ju Morimoto & the team!