Current Member - Professor Ben Sheldon
Faculty Member: Director of the EGI and Luc Hoffmann Professor of Field Ornithology.
Ben holding a sparrowhawk in Wytham Woods, Oxford, 2004.
Details
Name: Professor Ben Sheldon
Position: Luc Hoffmann Chair of Field Ornithology, Director of the Edward Grey Institute
Email: ben.sheldon@zoo.ox.ac.uk
Autobiography
I studied zoology at Cambridge, obtained my PhD at Sheffield, and then held a succession of postdoctoral fellowships at the Universities of Uppsala and Edinburgh. I moved to Oxford as a Royal Society University Research Fellow in 2000, became Head of the EGI in October 2002 and became the Director of the EGI and the first holder of the Luc Hoffmann Chair in Field Ornithology in 2004.
Research Activities
I have broad interests in evolutionary biology, ecology and behavioural ecology. Much of my work has addressed the ecological and evolutionary causes of variation in natural populations, particularly utilising experimental manipulation with analysis of long-term data sets. Examples of recent questions addressed by my research group include:
Evolution caused by dispersal in Great Tits: Dany Garant, (BBSRC-funded postdoc) showed, with myself and Loeske Kruuk, that differential dispersal acted as a form of sorting mechanism, producing rapid and small-scale phenotypic and genetic differentiation. Hence, dispersal can act to promote diversity rather than, as is typically suggested, to counteract it; see Garant et al. 2005 Nature 433, 60-65). Work is currently underway, funded by NERC, with Teddy Wilkin as a postdoc, and Amy Hinks as a DPhil student, to test the generality of this process. Dany is now on the Faculty at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada.
Phenotypic plasticity and climate change: Using the EGI's long-term study of the great tit - spanning almost five decades - we showed recently that this population had been effective in tracking changes in climate, maintaining close synchrony with the key food resources (winter moth caterpillars) that determine success in breeding. This close tracking is accomplished by phenotypic plasticity alone, in contrast with some other recent studies (Charmantier et al. 2008 Science 320, 800-803).
Evolutionary genetics of ageing in mute swans: Anne Charmantier, who was a Marie Curie postdoc in my group (she's now a CNRS Research Fellow in Montpellier), used data from a long-term study of mute swans to test prediction about how the genetic covariance of early and late life reproductive processes should evolve under different models of senescence. Her results showed clearly that there is a negative genetic correlation between early and late life fecundity in these wild birds: effectively, genes associated with early breeding are associated with an early cessation to reproduction and vice versa. These findings support the predictions of George Williams's antagonistic pleiotropy theory (see: Charmantier et al. 2006 PNAS 103, 6587-6592).
Spatial partitioning in avian malaria: We have several ongoing projects that address the ecology and epidemiology of malaria in birds, particularly in the tit populations near Oxford. Our recent work has shown pronounced small-scale spatial variation in the prevalence of malaria, but also in the distribution of malaria 'species' (see Wood et al. 2007 Mol. Ecol. 16, 3263-3273). Current work, including a NERC grant from 2008-2011 seeks to understand the causes and consequences of such small-scale differences.
Funding
Our work has been funded by grants from NERC, BBSRC and The Royal Society, in addition to external fellowships and scholarships from The Royal Society, NERC, NSERC (Canada), NSF, the Tertiary Education Commission of New Zealand, The Christopher Welch Trust and the European Union. If you are interested in joining my research group please feel free to contact any of my current group for an informal opinion concerning what it's like to be here; you should also read the information concerning funding routes to joining the EGI.
Services and Honours
Current Editorial Board Membership: The American Naturalist (2001-); Journal of Animal Ecology (2006-); PLoS Biology (2006-); Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B (2001-2008). I was awarded the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour's Outstanding New Researcher Prize in 1998, and the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 2005, and I currently serve on the Council of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology.
Selected Recent Papers
Charmantier, A., McCleery, R.H., Cole, L., Perrins, C.M., Kruuk, L.E.B. & Sheldon, B.C. 2008. Adaptive phenotypic plasticity in response to climate change in a wild bird population. Science 320, 800-803. | Read abstract/paper online
Ellegren, H. & Sheldon, B.C. 2008. Genetic basis of fitness differences in wild populations. Nature 452, 169-175. | Read abstract/paper online
Szulkin, M. & Sheldon, B.C. 2008. Dispersal as a means of inbreeding avoidance in a wild bird population. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275, 703-711. | Read abstract/paper online
Wood, M.J., Cosgrove, C.L., Wilkin, T.A., Knowles, S.C.L., Day, K.P. & Sheldon, B.C. 2007. Within-population variation in prevalence and lineage distribution of avian malaria in blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus. Molecular Ecology 16, 3263-3273| Read abstract/paper online
Charmantier, A., McCleery, R.H., Perrins, C. & Sheldon, B.C. 2006. Quantitative genetics of age at reproduction in the mute swan: support for antagonistic pleiotropy models of senescence. PNAS 103, 6587-6592. | Read abstract/paper online
Garant, D., Kruuk, L.E.B., Wilkin, T.A., McCleery, R.H. & Sheldon, B.C. 2005. Evolution driven by differential dispersal within a wild bird population. Nature 433, 60-65. | Read abstract/paper online
West, S.A., Shuker, D.M. & Sheldon, B.C. 2005. Sex ratio adjustment when relatives interact: a test of constraints on adaptation. Evolution 59, 1211-1228. | Read abstract/paper online
Garant, D., Kruuk, L.E.B., McCleery, R.H. & Sheldon, B.C. 2004. Phenotypic evolution in a changing environment: a case study with great tit fledging mass. Amer. Nat. 164, E115-E129.| Read abstract/paper online
Sheldon, B.C. & West, S.A. 2004. Maternal condition, dominance, and sex ratio in ungulate mammals. Amer. Nat. 163, 40-54. | Read abstract/paper online
Sheldon, B.C., Kruuk, L.E.B. & Merilä, J. 2003. Natural selection and inheritance of breeding time and clutch size in the collared flycatcher. Evolution 57, 406-420. | Read abstract/paper online
West, S.A. & Sheldon, B.C. 2002. Constraints in the evolution of facultative sex ratio adjustment. Science 295, 1685-1688. | Read abstract/paper online
Veen, T., Borge, T., Griffith, S.C., Sætre, G.-P., Bures, S., Gustafsson, L. & Sheldon, B.C. 2001. Hybridization and adaptive mate choice in flycatchers. Nature 411, 45-50. | Read abstract/paper online
Merilä, J., Kruuk, L.E.B. & Sheldon, B.C. 2001. Cryptic evolution in a wild bird population. Nature 412, 76-79. | Read abstract/paper online
