Meet the Team

My research interests involve understanding the behavioural, genetic and evolutionary components surrounding how individual organisms self-organize into social groups, a process often referred to as “social organization”. This behaviour is prevalent throughout the animal kingdom and individual organisms often cooperate to forage efficiently, evade predators, etc. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster has recently been shown to self-organize into structured social groups and the well-characterized genome of this organism offers valuable insight into the genetics of social organization. My thesis involves studying social organization across multiple Drosophila species through the comparative method. The Drosophila species are very diverse genetically and ecologically and the phylogenetic relationships of many species are well characterized. Additionally, many species have had their genomes sequenced and the number of species sequenced continues to grow. With these resources at my disposal, I aim to model the evolution of social organization in Drosophila by studying the behaviours of a variety of species at the individual and group level.