Reproductive strategies and sexual selection/conflict
- Causes and consequences of sexual cannibalism, mating plugs and genital mutilation
- Chemical communication: olfactory mate attraction and mate assessment
- Suicidal maternal brood care and evolution of sociality in spiders
- Courtship through tremulation
Functional morphology
- Anatomy of fitness: copulatory mechanisms and sperm storage
- Morphological basis of gustation and olfaction in spiders
- Comparative analysis of spider brains
Evolutionary transformation & phylogenetics
- Evolution of secondary sexual traits
- Diversification of arthropod body appendages
- Variability of vibratory signals within and between species
- Comparative ultrastructure of poison glands in chilopods
Responses to changing environments
These are some of the methods we apply
- Behavioural observation (video, highspeed)
- Field experiments
- Controlled experiments in the laboratory: manipulation and common garden experiments
- Molecular analyses: whole-genome sequencing, population genomics, SNPs, microsatellite markers
- Morphological methods: histology, ultrastructure (TEM, SEM), micro-computed tomography (Micro-CT), cLSM
- Laser vibrometry
