Up to now, I have mainly been working on animal reproductive behaviours involving several focuses ranging from mate choice, sperm allocation strategy, male competitive behaviour to sexual conflict. As a red thread, I am interested in the evolution of sexual and social interactions, the consequences at the population level and the feedback to the individual behaviour. And I like to combine empirical and theoretical approaches for this purpose.

In my PhD thesis, I investigate the evolution of a novel male reproductive strategy involved in postcopulatory competition in web building spiders. We showed that in the spider species Larinia jeskovi, males incur some damage to the female during copulation by mutilating an external structure of the female genitalia. Once this genital structure is missing, genital coupling is impossible which hinders female copulation with any subsequent rival males. By doing so, males secure their paternity and are able to remate with other females. In order to investigate the causes and consequences of external female genital mutilation, I mix fieldwork in the Biebrza National Park (Poland), lab work (behavioural, morphological, physiological and genetic analyses) and theoretical modelling in collaboration with Dr. Lutz Fromhage (University of Jyväskylä).