Phoresy is the dispersal of small organisms on larger ones to move out of an unfavourable habitat. Although these interactions are transient, they can form tight links with mutualistic interactions if the phoretic organisms ...

Large herbivores can selectively feed on nutrient rich resources, resulting in regular deposition of high quality organic matter in the form of dung. In tropical forests such as in southern India it is estimated that large ...

Dispersal has important ecological and evolutionary consequences for a species. Marine dispersal is unique because of facilitation by ocean currents, where oceanography interacts with species traits and environmental ...

The fig–fig wasp system is a brood site pollination system where pollinators breed inside an enclosed globular inflorescence (syconium) that they pollinate. This pollination mutualism is subjected to exploitation by the ...

Cooperation is ubiquitous across taxa in the animal kingdom. For example, microbes cooperate in producing antibiotic-resistant biofilms, mammals and birds collectively mob predators, and humans cooperate in utilization of ...

A focus in evolutionary biology is to understand the drivers of diversity in animal behavioural traits in the living world. Animals facing similar problems in the environment, such as the problem of how much to invest in ...

This thesis is spurred by the overarching question “why is a plant where it is in space and time?”, which, when asked in different global communities over the last century or so, has contributed to the development of general ...

Understanding the patterns and processes generating biodiversity is fundamental to ecology and evolutionary biology, and studying diversification can give us key insights into this process. In my thesis, I investigate ...

Mutualism involves exchange of services and rewards between the partners, resulting in a net benefit to all those involved. In many mutualisms, hosts are larger partners that interact with several individuals of smaller ...

Migration is a behavioural strategy that species use to deal with seasonal variation in climate and resources. A common form of migration is elevational migration, which is a short-distance movement undertaken by mountain ...