I am fascinated by the field of “biomimetics” – attempting to find solutions to problems by looking to the natural world. Sometimes this involves buildings that work like termite nests, swimsuits that use tiny hooks like those found on shark skin, or Velcro that uses the same principles as seed burrs as an inspiration. However, among the most celebrated examples of biomimetics are those involving flight.
There have been a great many legends describing early attempts at flight, with perhaps the most famous being that of Daedalus and his son Icarus. Daedalus created the Labyrinth on Crete for King Minos and the king imprisoned Daedalus in a tower so that he could not spread the knowledge of labyrinth-building to other kingdoms. Daedalus escapes with Icarus, but Icarus flies too close to the sun causing the wax holding his feathers melts and he falls into the sea and drowns. Daedalus, meanwhile, reaches Sicily (750km away). Ovid’s description of the myth states that Daedalus “…flexed each [feather] into a gentle curve, so that they imitated real bird’s wings”, and so this is clearly a calculated (if legendary) attempt to mimic bird flight.Read More »
Something strange seems to be happening in one particular species of damselfly, the common blue jewel 
For the two or three people who actually pay any attention to what I get up to here, you might have noticed a bit of a theme over the past couple of months: large numbers of posts (an anomaly in itself!) summarising some of my papers. I set myself the task of writing these lay summaries to try to make my work a little bit more accessible to people who might be interested in the topic but who might not have access to the paper, have the technical skills needed to interpret the findings, or who simply don’t have time to go and read a 7,000 word scientific article.
Background: It is thought that all animals age: they show an increased probability of death at greater ages. However, the lifespans of many animals vary widely. What is it that determines whether or not an animal lives for one year or one hundred years? One of the key drivers is thought to be how likely you are to be killed by something else. Those animals that that are unlikely to be eaten, whether that is because they are very large (elephants), well armoured (tortoises) or poisonous (poison dart frogs), tend to evolve lower rates of ageing. After all, if you are going to live for a long time anyway, you might as well make the most of it. On the other hand, if you live precariously from day to day then there isn’t much point in investing later in life because you probably won’t get that far.
Background: As well as publishing in ecology and evolutionary biology, I am also interested in how that publishing industry works. There is a clear need to disseminate information as widely as possible in order to accelerate the rate of testing of new theories and discovery of new information. However, some publishing models (and some publishing companies) hide scientific research away so that most people do not have access to that work. Self-archiving is a way for researchers to make available certain forms of their research without breaking copyright (which is almost always handed over to the publishers).
Background: There are a number of ways in which animals and plants attempt to defend themselves from predators. Sometimes they look or sound like something that they are not, such as another animal or plant that is venomous, in a process known as “mimicry”. Other times, rather than attempting to deceive a predator after being seen, the animal or plant might try to hide altogether. This second defensive strategy, known as “camouflage”, can take a number of forms. One of the most interesting forms of camouflage is “disruptive colouration” which involves breaking up the edge of an animal to make it harder to detect.
Background: A large number of species are expanding their ranges in response to climate change. This is also true in the damselflies, where the small red-eyed damselfly (Erythromma viridulum) has recently (around 1998) crossed the sea from France to England. Since then, the species has moved hundreds of kilometres north in an unprecedented range expansion (at least as far as European dragonflies and damselflies are concerned). What is less clear is what impact this expansion has had on the species. Are the newly-founded populations the same as those that are resident in France? Can we trace the arrival and expansion of the species through genetic techniques?
Background: Animals and plants can benefit by resembling other species. For example, some plants have spots that look like ants to deter herbivores, cuckoos look like hawks to frighten smaller birds from their nests, and harmless snakes have striped bodies that resemble highly venomous species. However, there are other modes of resemblance: animals and plants can smell, sound or act like another species in addition to (or instead of) having visual resemblance. However, we don’t know much about how different types of mimicry interact in the wild.
Background: Animals and plants have a wide range of colours, and these different colours play different roles in different species. Some species might be signalling to potential predators that they are toxic (like a wasp’s stripes), others might be trying to hide (like a moth’s speckled grey wings), and others might be trying to signal to the opposite sex that they are high quality mates (like a peacock’s train). However, while there are clear functions in principle, the relative importance of different signals might vary depending on the context within which the animal or plant finds itself. For example, male ebony jewelwing damselflies (Calopteryx maculata) have very dark wings and this is thought to allow females of the same species to choose appropriate mates (i.e. to avoid mating with the wrong species). However, the dark pigment can also play a role in temperature regulation. Damselflies cannot generate their own heat and so rely on absorbing heat from the sun, which is helped by the dark pigment. I was interested in how the darkness of the wings varied between locations which experience different temperatures.
Katatrepsis 