At I-DEEL, we strive to answer fundamental questions (e.g., life-history evolution, tans-geneational effects) as well as applied questions (e.g., evolutionary medicine, environmental change, eco-toxicology). We tackle inter-disciplinary questions using a wide rage of techniques such as behavioural observations and experiments, molecular and physiological tools, as well as developing new statistical methods. We increasingly work with computational models, Big Data and research synthesis (collating evidence from multiple primary studies). We always strive to produce robust and transparent cutting-edge research.

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?

  • Evidence synthesis for PFAS effects on biota
  • Meta-analysis on trans-generational effects of parental environments
  • Sex differences in thermal plasticity
  • Interactive effects of stress and environmental enrichment on animal behaviour
  • Global synthesis of disease prevalence in corals
  • Taxonomic biases in academic literature
  • Robust inference and reproducibility in ecology and evolution

Examples of our past projects?

  • Meta-analysis of factors affecting judgement bias across animals
  • Transgenerational inheritance of enviornmentally induced phenotype in zebrafish
  • Maternal and ontogenetic effects on personality, cognition and metabolism in lizard
  • 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?

  • Fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster)

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  • House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)



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

What other species did we work with in the past?

  • Birds: ​Dunnocks (Prunella modularis), Adélie Penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae), Little Blue Penguins (Eudyptula minor)
  • Fish: Zebrafish (Danio rerio), Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), Common Bullies (Gobiomorphus cotidianus)
  • Frogs: Brown Tree Frog (Litoria ewingii), Red-Eyed Tree Frog (Litoria chloris)
  • Reptiles: Eastern Water Skink (Eulamprus quoyii), 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.