The Team

THE ANIMAL SOCIETIES TEAM

Andy Young
Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology

I started my career in Cambridge, completing my Honours degree and PhD, and then holding a Fellowship at Magdalene College. I then won a NERC Fellowship to move to Exeter’s Centre for Ecology & Conservation in 2007 and set up the sparrow weaver project, and a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship in 2010. I am Director of our flagship Evolutionary & Behavioural Ecology MSc Programme, a deputy Director of Postgraduate Research, and support international Research Fellowship programmes for the BBSRC and Royal Society. Away from the office, I am a kayaker, climber, photographer, mammalwatcher and father of twins.

Antony Brown

BBSRC PhD to 2022
Age-trajectories in performance in a cooperatively breeding bird

I am studying the evolution and mechanisms of age-related changes in performance in sparrow weaver societies. My interests span parental age effects, telomere biology, patterns of cooperation, and dispersal strategies.

Melanie Weedon

NERC PhD to 2023
Senescence and Parental age effects
in wild European badgers

I am studying the mechanisms of ageing in a remarkable long-term field study of European badgers. My interests span parental age effects on offspring performance, cellular senescence, endocrine interactions with immunity and ageing, and immunosenescence.

Olivia O’Callaghan

Masters by Research to 2021
Social and climatic effects on survival in a wild cooperative bird

I am using long-term life-history data to investigate how group size and climatic variables interact to influence patterns of survival in sparrow-weaver societies. This work seeks to shed new light on the patterns of selection on social behaviour in variable environments.

Jess Briner

PhD to 2022
Climatic effects on core body temperatures
and fitness in an arid-zone bird

I am using core body temperature loggers to investigate the effects of climatic conditions on the body temperatures and fitness of sparrow-weavers, with a view to advancing our understanding of the likely impacts of climate change on arid-zone birds.

Pablo Capilla Lasheras

PhD 2019 & Collaborator
The Evolution of Cooperation in Variable Environments

For my PhD I studies the evolution of cooperation & plasticity in variable environments, conducting experiments, long-term life-history analyses & next-gen sequencing work using cooperative sparrow weavers as a model system. I continue to collaborate on these projects while researching evolutionary responses to anthropogenic change.

COLLABORATORS

We work with a wide range of expert collaborators, allowing us to conduct
integrative evolutionary and mechanistic research across a range of model systems