News

April

Cameron and Ben’s paper about critical weaknesses in shielding strategies for COVID-19
has been published in PLOS Glob Public Health and has received a fair amount of press coverage. Read online | PDF

Ben has (finally) published one of his leftover PhD chapters about the impact of social information on the coevolution of sociality and virulence in Evolution. Read online | PDF

Jason has returned to his PhD following a 12 month secondment with UKHSA. Welcome back!

March

Ben has joined Simon Fraser University as an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics.

February

Ben has co-authored a paper in Epidemics about challenges for modelling interventions in future pandemics. Read online | PDF

January

Cameron and Ben have released a new preprint on the antigenic evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in immunocompromised hosts.

Lydia and Ben have had their review on coevolutionary theory published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Read online | PDF

December

Cameron (poster) and Ben (talk) presented their research on non-pharmaceutical interventions at the virtual Epidemics conference.

November

Ben will be joining the Department of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University in the spring as an Associate Professor.

October

Alistair and Ben have a new paper out in Evolution on Fisher’s classical hypothesis about differential mortality and sex ratio evolution.

Ben is teaching MA30047: Mathematical biology 1 this semester.

September

Cameron and Ben have released a new preprint on critical weaknesses in shielding strategies for COVID-19.

July

Nar, Alistair and Ben have a new paper out in the Journal of Theoretical Biology on how biases in sex ratio and disease characteristics affect the spread of sexually transmitted infections.

June

Congratulations to Hettie Chapman, who has finished her MMath project and is graduating this summer. Hettie will start a PhD at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in the autumn.

May

Ben has released a new preprint on non-pharmaceutical interventions and the emergence of pathogen variants.

Ben gave a virtual talk and took part in a panel discussion hosted by ANU and the University of Melbourne.

April

Ben gave a virtual talk for the Department of Mathematics at the Simon Fraser University.

Ben has a new letter out in PNAS about evolutionarily stable strategies in periodically fluctuating populations.

Jason is starting a 12-month secondment with the Joint Biosecurity Centre to work on COVID-19.

March

Ben is Co-I on a new grant funded by NERC to study the evolutionary processes shaping greenbeard recognition systems and the control of cooperative behaviour.

Ben gave a virtual talk for the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

January

Welcome to Cameron Smith, who has joined the group as a postdoc.

Ben has written a primer on herd immunity in Current Biology.

December

Ben gave a virtual talk for the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Sciences at the University of Zurich.

Ben has a new paper out in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology about the maintenance of sex by parasitism in the absence of so-called ‘Red Queen Dynamics’.

November

Congratulations to Nar, who has successfully passed his thesis defence! He will be joining the Biology & Biochemistry department at Bath as a Teaching Fellow.

October

Lydia Buckingham has joined the group as a PhD student.

Ben is supervising an MMath project for Hettie Chapman, who will be working on STIs.

September

Ben has released a new preprint on how social information and disease combine to shape the coevolution of host sociality and parasite virulence.

August

Ben has a new paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on key questions for modelling COVID-19 exit strategies.

June

Congratulations to Tom Griffiths and Tim Coulter, who have finished their MMath projects and are graduating this summer.

March

Ben gave a Royal Institute Masterclass for ~100 teenagers on mathematical epidemiology called “Going Viral!”

Ben gave a talk in Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol on niche theory.

Ben has a new paper out in Trends in Ecology and Evolution on measuring coevolutionary dynamics in multi-species communities.

February

Ben is teaching MA10202: Modelling the dynamics of life 2 this semester for first-year Natural Science students and second-year Biology students.

December

Ben has a new paper out in Evolution on host-STI coevolution (PDF).

Ben has a new paper out in Oikos on the effects of dispersal on speciation and species richness in a metacommunity (PDF). Editor’s Choice article!

Ben gave a talk at BES2019 in Belfast: Does ecology matter in evolutionary models?

November

Ben gave a talk at the Zeeman Institute at the University of Warwick: Finding Your Niche: How competition drives patterns of diversity.

Ben has a new book chapter out in Wildlife Disease Ecology: Linking Theory to data and application, on sexually transmitted infections in natural populations.

October

Two PhD students have joined the group and will be co-supervised by Ben. Yvonne Krumbeck is studying eco-evolutionary dynamics with demographic noise and Halimubieke Naerhulan is studying mating system variation in wild shorebirds.

Ben is supervising MMath projects for Tom Griffiths and Tim Coulter, who will be working on coevolution in communities and restriction-modification systems, respectively.

September

Alistair Pirrie has joined the group as a PhD student, studying the evolution of parasites and host reproductive strategies.

Ben has published a new commentary in Current Biology on transposons and CRISPR-Cas (PDF).

August

Ben gave a talk at ESEB 2019 in Turku: Does ecology matter in evolutionary models?

June

Jason Wood has joined the group as a PhD student after finishing his first year in the SAMBa DTP at Bath. He will be working on antagonistic coevolution in multi-species interactions.

May

Ben has released a new preprint on the relationship between dispersal and speciation/species richness.

Ben gave talks at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (University of Edinburgh) and the Institute of Integrative Biology (ETH Zurich).

March

Ben has released a new preprint on host-STI coevolution.

January

Ben has published a new paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology on the role of eco-evolutionary feedbacks in host-parasite coevolution (PDF).

November

Ben gave a talk at the Genetics Society meeting (Genotype to Phenotype to Fitness) in Exeter.

October

Ben is now based at the University of Bath, having spent the last 2 years at UC Berkeley.

Ben gave talks at the Population Ecology and Biological Invasion workshop at China Agricultural University (Beijing) and at Hefei University of Technology (School of Mathematics).

Ben gave a talk at the IGC Symposium (Microbial Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics) in Oeiras.

June

Ben has published a new paper in Proceedings B on the evolution of juvenile susceptibility to infectious disease (PDF).

May

Ben has published a new paper in Evolution Letters on host-mutualist coevolution in the presence of a parasite (PDF).

February

Ben gave talks at the University of Bristol (School of Biological Sciences), University of Bath (Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics seminar series), and the University of Sheffield (Mathematics & Statistics).