We’re happy to welcome Tom Houslay, (Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK) to the board. Tom is an evolutionary ecologist whose research focuses on how genetic, environmental and social factors interact to shape multivariate phenotypes. He uses a combination of experimental manipulations and correlative (individual and quantitative genetic) studies to investigate variation in – and covariation between – life history and labile traits, including behaviour, hormones, and sexually-selected displays.

We asked Tom to tell us about his current research and select some papers from the journal to recommend.

Current research

“My current project involves investigating individual developmental trajectories in cooperative mammals, including links between growth, behaviour and endocrine traits. I am particularly interested in how traits are integrated at different levels, and how this integration might vary over development or due to environmental context. Recent related papers I’ve been involved with include work on multivariate behavioural plasticity in Trinidadian guppies (Houslay et al., 2018), and linking morphology and performance over ontogeny in the amphibious mangrove rivulus (Styga et al., 2018).”

Recommended reading:

“A recent Functional Ecology paper that I particularly enjoyed was a study by McCormick et al. (2018), where the authors measured a suite of behavioural, performance and morphological traits in juvenile damselfish and related these to survival in the field. Going slightly further back, this thought-provoking synthesis of ideas and evidence linking sex and ageing by Bonduriansky et al (2008) was pivotal to my PhD work, in which I investigated variation in age-dependent reproductive effort (a chapter of which I also published in this journal; Houslay at al., 2017). I am excited to join the Functional Ecology team, and hope to contribute to the continued success of an excellent journal.”