Our research topics are related to Evolution and Ecology. Also, our primary trait of interest is Behaviour. We tackle our questions using a variety of species (model systems), mainly fish, rodents and birds, and also using a wide rage of techniques such as behavioural observations and experiments, molecular and physiological tools, as well as developing new statistical methods. At I-DEEL, we would like to use evolutionary theory to answer fundamental questions (e.g., life-history evolution) as well as applied questions (e.g., evolutionary medicine) using state-of-the-art molecular toolkit (e.g., transcriptomics, methylomics, genome editing).  


What kind of topics we have worked on?

  • Sexual Selection
  • Mating Systems
  • Parental Care
  • Extrapair Paternity
  • Animal Personality, 
  • Environmental Sex Reversal
  • Compensatory Growth
  • Individual Differences
  • Ageing ...

Our main current projects?

  • Transgenerational inheritance of enviornmentally induced phenotype in zebrafish
  • Meta-analysis on trans-generational effects of maternal dietary manipulations
  • Ontogenetic effects on 'Greater Male Variability' in human academic achievement
  • Maternal and ontogenetic effects on personality, cognition and metabolism in lizard
  • Robust inference and reproducibility in ecology and evolution

Examples of our past projects?

  • Migration and life history in trout
  • Meta-analysis on differential allocation hypothesis
  • Extra-pair paternity in house sparrow
  • Mating systems in an introduced species – dunnocks
  • Maternal condition and sex ratio in mosquitofish,
  • Mate choice and vocalization in a frog
  • Behavioural syndomres in a New Zealand skink
  • Multi-dimensional behavioural change in hosts caused by parasites
  • Phenotypic plasticity in common bullies
  • Trojan sex chromosomes in mosquitofish
  • Population genetics of house sparrows
  • Nematode mitochondrial genome size and architecture
  • Morphology of sex chromosomes in birds
  • Genetic basis of variability in honeybee learning
  • Molecular mechanisms of memory and learning in honeybees
  • Catch-up growth and personality in mosquitofish
  • Effects of catch-up growth on metamorphosis in frogs
  • Meta-analysis on dietary restriction and longevity
  • R-square for GLMM
  • A Bayesian comparative method
  • Missing data and model averaging
  • Repeatability for Gaussian and non-Gaussian data
  • Effect size, confidence intervals and statistical significance

What kind of new topics we are interested in?

  • Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD)
  • Trans-generational Epigenetic Inheritance
  • Parental (Maternal & Paternal) Effects
  • Evolutionary Medicine
  • Phenotypic Plasticity
  • Anthropogenic Changes

What we are good at?

  • Meta-Analysis
  • Comparative Analysis
  • Complex Statistical & Computational Modelling

What are our current experimental systems/species?


  • Zebrafish (Danio rerio)



  • Eastern Water Skink (Eulamprus quoyii)



  • House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)



  • Dunnocks (Prunella modularis)



  • Dry lab: literature-based and computer-generated data

What other species did we work with in the past?

  • Birds: Adélie Penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae), Little Blue Penguins (Eudyptula minor)
  • Fish: Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), Common Bullies (Gobiomorphus cotidianus)
  • Frogs: Brown Tree Frog (Litoria ewingii), Red-Eyed Tree Frog (Litoria chloris)
  • Reptiles: McCann’s Skink (Oligosoma maccanni),
  • Invertebrates: honeybees (Apis mellifera), flour beetles (Tribolium castaneum), earthworms (Eisenia fetida), amphipods (Paracalliope fluviatilis)
A wordcloud based on the titles of our publications (up to 2015). Pdf version of this plot can be downloaded here.