Royal Society University Research Fellow

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Ashleigh_Griffin

Ashleigh Griffin

Details

Name: Ashleigh Griffin
Position: Royal Society University Research Fellow
Email: ashleigh.griffin@zoo.ox.ac.uk
Website: www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/group/griffin/index.html

Autobiography

I graduated in 1994 with a Zoology degree from the University of Edinburgh. I went on to do a PhD in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at Edinburgh with Josephine Pemberton on cooperative breeding in meerkats. One month after my PhD viva I had a baby girl and spent the next three years looking after her full-time. I returned to science in 2002 on a NERC postdoc with Angus Buckling and Stuart West, investigating the effect of competition on kin selection for cooperation. Busy time: I had another baby in 2003 and another year off work. I was awarded a Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship from the Royal Society in 2005, which I moved to Oxford in April 2009, before taking up a Royal Society URF in October.

Research Activities

I am interested in the evolution of cooperative behaviour because it poses a special problem for evolutionary theory - how can selection favour a behaviour that reduces reproductive success? The question is important, not just so we can gain an insight into striking examples such as colonies of social insects or meerkat groups, but because it is fundamental to understanding life as we know it: the evolution of the genome, the eukaryotic cell and multicellular organisms.

In previous years, my main focus has been the use of the bacterial system Pseudomonas aeruginosa, as an experimental system for testing predictions of social evolution theory. My current projects fall into two main categories::

  • The application of social evolution theory to understand clinical problems of bacterial infection.
  • The use of meta-analysis to test predictions of social evolution theory in patterns across species, primarily cooperatively breeding birds.

Other Information

I hold a L'Oreal UK For Women in Science Fellowship from 2008. I am on the Women Into Science and Engineering (WISE) campaign website that aims to encourage young women to pursue careers in science.

For analysis of issues surrounding women's under-representation in science, I recommend Women in Science, Engineering and Technology - Three Decades of UK Initiatives by Alison Phipps (reviewed here).

For more information about my research, lab members, collaborators, publications and work opportunities, please click here.

Selected publications

Cornwallis, CK, SA West, K Davis, AS Griffin (2010) Promiscuity and the evolutionary transition to complex societies. Nature 466, 969-972. | Read paper online

Cornwallis, CK, SA West, AS Griffin (2009) Routes to indirect fitness in cooperatively breeding vertebrates: kin discrimination and limited dispersal. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22, 2445-2457. | Read paper online

Brown, SP, SA West, SP Diggle, AS Griffin (2009) Social evolution in microorganisms and a Trojan horse approach to medical intervention strategies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 364, 3157-3168. | Read paper online

West, SA, AS Griffin, A Gardner (2007) Social semantics: altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 20, 415-432. | Read paper online

Griffin, AS, BC Sheldon, SA West (2005) Cooperative breeders adjust offspring sex ratios to produce helpful helpers. American Naturalist 166, 628-632. | Read paper online

Griffin, AS, SA West, A Buckling (2004) Cooperation and competition in pathogenic bacteria. Nature 430, 1024-1027. | Read paper online

Griffin, AS, SA West (2003) Kin discrimination and the benefit of helping in cooperatively breeding vertebrates. Science 302, 634-636. | Read paper online

Griffin, AS, JM Pemberton, PNM Brotherton, G McIlrath, D Gaynor, R. Kansky, J O'Riain, TH Clutton-Brock (2003) A genetic analysis of cooperative breeding in meerkats (Suricata suricatta). Behavioural Ecology 14, 472-480. | Read paper online