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/ Events

The Evolution of Society

19 - 20 January 2009 09:00 - 17:00

Organised by Professor Tim Clutton-Brock FRS, Professor R A Foley, Professor F L W Ratnieks and Professor S West

The meeting will synthesise our understanding of the evolution of social behaviour, association and cooperation in micro-organisms, invertebrates, vertebrates and man, providing a unified conceptual overview of the mechanisms involved in the evolution of societies, the causes of variation in their structure, the contrasts and similarities between the processes operating in animals and man and the principal questions still unresolved.

Organisers

  • Professor Tim Clutton-Brock FRS (Organiser and Speaker)

    Tim Clutton-Brock is the Prince Philip Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Cambridge. His research has explored the evolutionary causes and ecological consequences of variation in reproductive strategies and social behaviour in a wide range of natural systems, using a combination of field experiments, detailed analyses of individual differences in reproductive success and interspecific comparisons. In particular, he has initiated and developed long term studies of several naturally regulated populations of mammals (including red deer, Soay sheep and Kalahari meerkats), using them to investigate the pay offs of different reproductive strategies, the costs and benefits of competition and cooperation and the evolution of sex differences in behaviour and development.  His work has also investigated the regulation of population density in mammals, the effects of variation in density climate at the individual and population level and the interaction between population dynamics and selection. 

  • Professor Francis Ratnieks, University of Sussex, UK

    Francis Ratnieks is Professor of Apiculture at the University of Sussex and head of LASI, the Laboratory of Apiculture & Social Insects. He took his PhD in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University in New York State. During his PhD he also worked for the New York State Apiary Inspection Service doing research on honey bee diseases and providing information to beekeepers about disease management and identification. He is also a part time beekeeper, owning 180 hives when he lived in California. His research is focused on honey bees and social insects and addresses both basic and applied questions. One current area of research is on the control of honey bee diseases, including natural disease resistance via ‘hygienic behaviour’ in honey bees and stingless bees. He recently set up a research spin off business, LASI Queen Bees, to supply bees bred for high levels of hygienic behaviour to beekeepers.

  • Professor Stuart West

    Stuart West is the Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Oxford University.  He is a Royal Society University Research Fellow whose research interests are in the field of social evolution, especially issues such as cooperation, altruism, virulence and sex allocation.