The Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology - EGI Current Member

Faculty Member: Director of the EGI and Luc Hoffmann Professor of Field Ornithology.

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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, Professorial Fellow of Wolfson College and Associate Head of Department
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. I was appointed Associate Head of Department in 2011.

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.

I am not currently taking any new graduate students till Oct 2012 at the earliest, but I welcome inquiries from postdocs interested in bringing, or applying for, their own funding to work on any of the areas below.

Current research interests centre on four broad questions (and particularly on the linkages between them):

(1) The Role of Social Processes in Evolutionary Ecology: Funded by an ERC Advanced Investigator Award from 2010-2015, this research aims to understand the causes of individual variation in social behaviour, the consequences of social structure for a range of processes, including information and disease spread, and the way that individual and social effects interact in wild bird populations.

(2) Ecology and Epidemiology of Avian Diseases: Funded by successive NERC grants (2004-2011) this work focuses primarily on understanding the ecology and epidemiology of avian malaria in blue and great tits, using longitudinal time series. We have also recently begun work on avian flu in swans and a newly emergent form of avian pox in great tits.

(3) Quantitative and Molecular Genetics of Ecologically Relevant Traits: Using long-term data from population studies of tits and swans (and in collaboration with Dr Jon Slate, who was awarded an ERC grant for genetic mapping in great tits) we seek to understand the role of genes and the environment on traits that are under selection in natural populations, as well as their spatial and temporal dynamics. A particular emphasis has been on life history traits, rates of senescence, and behavioural syndromes.

(4) Ecology of Phenology and Plasticity in Birds: We use long-term data, but also increasingly fine-scale spatial and temporal information, to try to understand how different degrees of synchronization with the environment at different scales drives the evolution of plasticity, and how birds adjust foraging and parental behaviour in response.

Recent funding

Our work is currently funded by grants from the ERC, NERC and the European Commission, but in the past we have also attracted funds from 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, and the Christopher Welch Trust. 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-); Evolution (2010-); PLoS Biology (2006-); and Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2009-). I have also served as editor or associate editor for Animal Behaviour (2001-2003), Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B (2001-2008) and Journal of Animal Ecology (2006-2008). I am a member of NERC's Peer Review College (2004-2007; 2009-).

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 served on the Council of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology from 2005-2009.

Selected Recent Papers

Clutton-Brock, T.H. & Sheldon, B.C. 2010. Individuals and populations: the role of long-term, individual-based studies in ecology and evolutionary biology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 25, 562-573.

Knowles, S.C.L., Palinauskas, V. &Sheldon, B.C. 2010. Chronic malaria infections reduce fitness by increasing family inequalities: experimental evidence from a wild bird population. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 23, 557-569.

Quinn, J.L., Patrick, S., Bouwhuis, S., Wilkin, T.A. &Sheldon, B.C. 2009. Heterogeneous selection on a heritable temperament trait in a complex environment. Journal of Animal Ecology 78, 1203-1215.

Wilkin, T.A. & Sheldon, B.C. 2009. Sex differences in the persistence of natal environmental effects on life-histories. Current Biology 19, 1998-2002.

Bouwhuis, S., Sheldon, B.C. , Verhuslt, S. & Charmantier, A. 2009. Great tits growing old: selective disappearance and the architecture of reproductive senescence. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276, 2769-2777.

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.

Ellegren, H. & Sheldon, B.C. 2008. Genetic basis of fitness differences in wild populations. Nature 452, 169-175.

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.

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. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, 6587-6592.

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. American Naturalist 164, E115-E129.

Sheldon, B.C. & West, S.A. 2004. Maternal condition, dominance, and sex ratio in ungulate mammals. American Naturalist163, 40-54.