Meet the group
Sheena Cotter
Senior Lecturer since 2014 NERC Fellow 2010-1014 |
I am an evolutionary ecologist. My research interests lie in understanding how organisms interact with each other, particularly how organisms evolve to defend themselves against attacks from other organisms and how they trade-off the costs of those defences with other traits such as reproductive investment and healthy ageing. I use a combination of physiological, behavioural, quantitative and molecular genetic approaches to address these questions, using insects as model systems. My major focus is on the costs of immunity: Which ecological factors have shaped the evolution of immunity? Immunity to parasites and pathogens is an important life history trait. Natural selection should favour individuals with stronger immune systems. However, trade-offs could alter the optimal level of investment in different environments. I have investigated these costs in several insect models. I am also Editor in Chief for the journal Ecological Entomology.
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Joe Rees
PhD 2023-present |
Joe is a PhD student at the University of Lincoln. He is looking at the shape of the highly variable aposematic signal of carrion beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides). Initially, the project will focus on environmental manipulations and the effect on the shape of the signal but will expand into the effect of the signal shape on predator cognition and the phylogenetics of this signal across the Coleoptera tree of life, and beyond. Joe is co-supervised by Marcello Ruta and Tom Pike (University of Lincoln), and Carita Lindstedt-Kareksela (University of Helsinki).
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Ava Searles
MSc by Research 2022-2024 |
Ava has just submitted her thesis for her MSc by Research at the University of Lincoln. She examined how carrion beetle diversity is determined by habitat type and season in a long term rewilding and restoration project at Doddington Hall. She also investigated how beetles affect soil biological and chemical properties during breeding. Ava was co-supervised by Natalie Pilakouta (University of St Andrews) and Lan Qie.
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Andie Goodwin
MSc by Research 2021-2023 |
Andie has just completed an MSc by Research at the University of Lincoln. They investigated how single, co- and bi-parenting affected reproductive outcomes in burying beetles, and whether this differed with resource availability. Andie was co-supervised by Iain Stott.
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Olivia Chamberlain
MSc by Research 2021-2022 |
Olivia completed her MSc by Research at the University of Lincoln. During a long term rewilding and restoration project at Doddington Hall, cattle will be allowed to roam more widely. Olivia investigated how increased interactions between dogs and cattle during this process could lead to increased risk of parasite transmission. Olivia was co-supervised by Simon Clegg.
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Alice completed her MSc by Research at the University of Lincoln. She was researching liver fluke prevalence in cattle and sheep, and the immune response of the intermediate snail host. Alice's MSc was co-supervised by Simon Clegg. Alice has now moved to the Roslin Institute/SRUC Edinburgh to start her PhD on the characterisation and optimisation of the rumen microbiome using culture-dependent and metagenomic-based approaches.
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Alice Buckner
MSc by Research 2020-2021
MSc by Research 2020-2021
Sonal Ladwa
Research assistant 2018-2020 MSc by Research 2020-2022 |
Sonal completed her MSc by Research at the University of Lincoln. She investigated how parental age, size and resource availability affect reproductive output, using burying beetles as a model system. Sonal completed her BSc in Biology in 2020 and volunteered as a research assistant in the lab during her undergraduate degree. She was co-supervised by Carl Soulsbury. Sonal is now studying for a PhD at the University of Sheffield.
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Ratheesh Kallivalappil
PhD student 2017-2021 |
Ratheesh completed his PhD on 'The Macroecology of Indian Pollinators: Patterns, Processes and Future Implications'. He was co-supervised by Daniel Pincheira Donoso and funded by an Indian government scholarship. He is primarily interested in the biodiversity of vertebrate pollinators. His PhD aims to understand their distributional patterns on a large-scale basis. He also explores the effect of life history traits and anthropogenic impacts on pollinator biodiversity using macroecological principles.
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Florencia Grattarola
PhD student 2018-2021 |
Florencia completed her PhD on 'Macroecological patterns of biodiversity across the tree of life: Uruguay as a model region'. She was co-supervised by Daniel Pincheira Donoso and funded by the National Agency for Research and Innovation (ANII-Uruguay). Her work has focused on quantifying the hotspots of biodiversity in Uruguay. As part of her project she founded and leads Biodiversidata - the first open-access database of the biodiversity of Uruguay. Her research interests have been primarily focused on biodiversity informatics, macroecology, citizen-science and on the promotion of an open-access culture for scientific data. Florencia is now based at Petr Keil's lab at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague.
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Raven Reynolds
MSc by Research 2018-2019 |
Raven graduated from the University of Lincoln in 2019 gaining a BSc Hons Biomedical Science. She then completed her MSc by Research on 'The empirical relationship between global patterns of disease and country level variation in the balance of nutrients in the diet', co-supervised by Csanad Bachrati. Her work focused on macronutrients in the diet (Fats, Carbohydrates and Proteins) and type-2-diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases, using computational approaches. With the laboratory skills gained in her undergraduate degree and her computational skills gained from her MSc by Research, she is now carrying out a PhD at the Quadram Institute, Norwich, investigating the ways in which members of the gut microbiota utilise/produce vitamins for adaptation to the mucus niche.
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Robert Holdbrook
PhD student 2015-2019 |
Bobby was based at Lancaster University with Prof. Ken Wilson, completing his PhD "Nutrition modulates the interaction between the bacterium Xenorhabdus nematophila and its lepidopteran host Spodoptera littoralis" in 2019. He examined the role of nutrition in host-parasite interactions, contrasting how the bacteria grow in vivo when the host diet is manipulated, with how they grow in vitro, in broths that mimic the nutrient profile of insect blood. His key findings are that nutrients in the caterpillars' blood vary with the diet, despite having mechanisms for homeostasis, although blood lipids are more tightly regulated than proteins and carbohydrates. He has also shown that bacterial growth rates are more strongly affected by the nutrients available to the bacteria than by the immune response of the host, suggesting that when hosts "self-medicate" with proteins they might be trying to make themselves a less suitable "meal" for their pathogens.
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Charlotte Miller
PhD Student 2013-2017 |
Charlotte completed her PhD in 2017 on "Infection dynamics in the burying beetle". She investigated the interaction between the highly virulent pathogenic bacterium, Photorhabdus luminescens, and the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides. By looking at the time course of infection, how bacterial numbers fluctuated and quantifying the immune response, Charlotte was able to show that beetles show extreme levels of resistance (the ability to reduce bacterial numbers) and also tolerance of infection, which is mediated by the diet the beetles consume. A high fat diet allowed the beetles to cope with higher bacterial loads than a high protein diet. She also found that she could predict which beetles would succumb to infection before any health effects were apparent, just by monitoring weight change post-infection.
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Ekhlas Al-Shareefi
PhD student 2013-2017 |
Ekhlas completed her PhD in 2017 on "Nutritional ecology and immunology of the burying beetle". She used the 'Geometric Framework', a state space modelling approach, to determine the nutritional preferences of this carnivorous beetle and how preferred or non-preferred diets affected survival, reproduction and their immune response under different environmental conditions. Her major finding was that, as has been shown in non-carnivorous animals, reducing the protein content of the diet massively increased the beetles' life-expectancy, with the highest protein diet decreasing their life expectancy by two thirds! This was surprising as carnivores are thought to have sufficient post-ingestive processing mechanisms to cope with excess protein. In contrast, she found that the highest protein diets supported stronger personal and social immune responses, suggesting that the best diet for health depends on the risk of infection. She is now working as a lecturer at Babylon Women's University.
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Catherine Reavey
PhD student 2011-2014 BBSRC PDRA 2014-2016 |
Catherine completed her PhD in 2014 on "Immune and reproductive strategies of burying beetles". Catherine looked at both personal and social immune responses of beetles and considered how they were affected by the sex and reproductive status of the adults. Her key findings were that costly personal immune responses were supressed during breeding, and that as beetles aged, their investment in their personal immune response declined, whereas the social immune response peaked in middle-aged beetles. Catherine also found that beetle larvae contribute their own social immune response to the preservation of the carcass, meaning that successful breeding episode is really a family affair! Catherine then took up a PDRA position at Lancaster University with Ken Wilson, examining the role of nutrition in host-parasite interactions (See Research) . She is now working as a Senior Research Scientist at Oxitec.
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Ana was based at the University of Cambridge with Rebecca Kilner (PI), examining the costs of social immunity in burying beetles, why individuals vary in their levels of investment and whether investment is moderated under different environmental conditions. Ana also worked on the carcass microflora, determining whether parents could alter the microbial composition on the skin of the carcass during breeding. Ana is now working as a PDRA at the University of Exeter looking at the development of resistance to xenobiotics.
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Farley carried out his PhD at the Universidade Federale de Vicosa in Brazil, but spent a year working in my group under the Science without borders scheme, looking at the quantitative genetics of immune and reproductive investment in the burying beetle, alongside Catherine Reavey. Farley is now a postdoctoral fellow at UFV, working on density-dependent prophylaxis in the pest caterpillar Anticarsia gemmatalis with Prof. Sam Elliot.
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Collaborators
Nutritional ecology and host-parasite interactions
Prof. Ken Wilson
Lancaster University |
Dr. Judith Smith
University of Central Lancashire |
Burying beetle ecology - social immunity, parental care, aposematism
Prof. Rebecca Kilner
University of Cambridge |
Dr. Carita Lindstedt
University of Jyvaskyla |
Dr. James Gilbert
University of Hull |
Host-parasite interactions and macroecology
Nature recovery and insect functional ecology