Dear colleagues,

don’t forget today’s Biology Thursday seminar (12:15, via zoom, link below) will be given by Dr. Philip Downing (Lund University) on

“Division of Labour, Life History Trade-offs and the Evolution of Group Complexity in Cooperative Birds”

Cooperative groups are fundamental to the structure of life on Earth. For example, a multicellular organism is a collection of single cells and a super-organism, such as an ant colony, is a collection of individual ants. Multicellular organisms and super-organisms are examples of complex groups. Within these groups there is a strict division of reproduction, the reproductive and sterile parts are highly specialized in their respective roles and the groups themselves are extremely large. But not all groups are this complex. Many cooperative groups are relatively small, group members share reproduction and there is no specialization. Familiar examples include meerkats and paper wasps. The challenge is to explain why some species have taken the pathway to increased group complexity while others have remained simple. In this talk, I will present results from my own research that addresses this problem. My model system are the cooperatively breeding birds, about 200 species in which three or more adults raise offspring together, and I use phylogenetic comparative methods to travel through time and test predictions from evolutionary theory about why only some groups have evolved to be complex

More on Philip’s research at:
https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/persons/philip-downing(5488cb64-9fd7-4273-8021-46792cbcbe4c).html#Overview

See you soon!

Heikki

Heikki Helanterä is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Biology Thursday seminar

Time: This is a recurring meeting Meet anytime

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https://oulu.zoom.us/j/62917763539?pwd=WENZRy9Bb3NlSzlyeVlVamJ4RHR5Zz09

Meeting ID: 629 1776 3539

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