Evolution of social and reproductive behaviour

在我的研究小组中，我们研究了与社会行为、生殖和生活史相关的特征在各种动物中的进化，包括昆虫、哺乳动物和人类。我们关于社会行为的研究旨在帮助揭示动物之间相互合作的情况，而不是参与自然界中常见的竞争形式。这些研究包括对特定的相关物种的行为、生态和进化进行详细分析，并将这些物种与不同的其他物种进行比较。我们在生殖方面的工作集中在理解为什么大多数动物进行有性繁殖(雄性和雌性)，而进化生物学的理论预测，在将基因传递给下一代方面，无性、全雌性繁殖更有效率。这是生物学中一个关键的悬而未决的问题，对人类遗传学具有重要影响。我们关于生活史进化的工作解决了两个主要问题，即哺乳动物的胎盘如何进化，以及寿命是如何进化的。这些研究使用胎盘和生活史特征以及似乎影响这些特征的基因在物种之间的差异，来找出哪些基因和这些基因中的哪些变化在调节它们的发育和进化方面最重要。最后，我们正在从进化的角度研究自闭症和精神分裂症的遗传基础，这是涉及人类社会行为的两种主要疾病，以深入了解这些疾病的原因以及可以采取什么措施来缓解这些疾病。

In my research group we study the evolution of traits related to social behaviour, reproduction, and life history, in a variety of animals, including insects, mammals, and humans. Our work on social behavior is designed to help uncover the circumstances under which animals cooperate with one another, rather than engaging in the forms of competition that usual prevail in nature. These studies involve detailed analyses of the behaviour, ecology and evolution of specific sets of related species, and comparisons of these species with diverse others. Our work on reproduction is focused on understanding why most animals engage in sexual reproduction (with two sexes, male and female), when theory from evolutionary biology predicts that asexual, all-female reproduction is more efficient in terms of passing on genes to the next generation. This is a key unresolved question in biology, with important implications for human genetics. Our work on the evolution of life histories addresses two main issues, how placentation evolves in mammals, and how lifespan has evolved. These studies use variation among species in placental and life-history traits, and in the genes that appear to underly these traits, to sort out what genes, and what changes in these genes, have been most important in mediating their development and evolution. Finally, we are studying the genetic bases of autism and schizophrenia, the two main disorders involving human social behaviour, from evolutionary perspectives, to generate insights into what causes these diseases and what can be done to alleviate them.