The majority of our work is focussed on reproductive parasites: parasites that target host reproduction. We particularly specialise in a group called the ‘male-killers’. These are bacteria that live in the cytoplasm of the host cell (generally an insect host), pass from a female to her progeny within the egg, and kill those progeny during embryogenesis if they are male. They are also known as ‘son-killers’. Male-killers are a really good candidate for driving host ecology and evolution. They have a strong phenotype: they kill rather than debilitate. They are common across insect taxa (a diverse range of insect species are known to carry them). Finally, they can achieve very high prevalence levels in the wild. So they can have a real impact. They are also rather diverse taxonomically: the bacteria come from many different groups, producing the possibility of variation in the mechanism of male-killing, and variation in evolutionary response.
We use a variety of approaches in this work: Classical field work combined with molecular ecology to investigate impact, developing ideas as to their impact, importance and evolution through mathematical modelling, testing ideas of mechanism using classical genetics in Drosophila, testing ideas as to impact using experimental evolution approaches in Drosophila analysing the past signature of evolution by examining patterns of molecular evolution.
Work within the laboratory is currently funded by BBSRC, NERC, MRC, NSF and the EU, to whom we are grateful.
