The Centre for Ecology and Conservation, based at the University of Exeter’s Penryn campus in Cornwall, hosts a large group of evolutionary biologists. Together, we work to understand the mechanisms responsible for biodiversity across organisational levels, and how these are impacted by an ever-changing world.
As evolutionary biologists we do not just describe biodiversity in the broadest sense, but also try to understand how this diversity – among individuals, populations and species – has come about, and how it is being maintained. We do this across levels of biological organisation, so from genes to ecosystems. To this end, we go beyond mechanisms and ask ask the ultimate Why? questions.
We use a diverse range of methods, systems and organisms. Our current research includes studies of the origin and early evolution of animal life, host-pathogen/parasite coevolution, the evolution of parental effects and inheritance systems, the biology of ageing, the genetic basis of resistance and mimicry, selfish genes, the evolution of insect migration, sexual selection and conflict, speciation, individual- and population-level consequences of environmental change, the evolution of vision and adaptive coloration, the influence of ecological processes on trait evolution, evolutionary constraints and trade-offs.
The interdisciplinary approaches we employ range from broad scale comparative approaches across large numbers of species, and focused single species studies, theoretical models investigating what is and is not likely to occur in response to selection, and genomic approaches to dissect evolution at the level of the chromosome, gene and nucleotide. We employ these approaches to address important questions on fundamental evolutionary processes and applied problems relating to disease transmission, pest control and conservation biology.