Our Research

The overall aim of our research is to understand how individual-level host heterogeneity scales up to population level disease outcomes.

Using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as an established model of infection, immunity and behaviour, we take an experimental approach to investigate:

  • the causes of individual heterogeneity in immune responses,
  • life-history traits and social behaviours, and
  • the consequences of heterogeneity for how pathogens might spread and evolve. 
Graphic image of fruit flies in various colours with a larger one in the foreground, in black, above each are four symbols, representing: resistance, tolerance, behaviour and fecundity. These words being above the symbols of the large fruit fly in the foreground.
Drivers of host heterogeneity in disease-related trait
Graphic image of fruit flies in various colours with symbols above them in rectangular boxes. Each fruit fly is enclosed in a circle and the circles are all connected in a network diagram style.
Epidemiological consequences of host heterogeneity
Graphic image of fruit flies enclosed in 2 concentric circles, there's a group of flies to the left feeding and one separate on the right, with its thorax showing and a circle joined with lines showing what appears to be a close up of the thorax with jointed tubular structures.
Evolutionary ecology of behavioural responses to infection

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