Current Member - Dr. Stuart Wigby

Dr. Stuart Wigby

Details

Name: Dr. Stuart Wigby
Position: Lloyd's Tercentenary Fellow
Email: stuart.wigby@zoo.ox.ac.uk or s.wigby@gmail.com

Autobiography

I studied Zoology at Sheffield (1997-2000) and, after an interlude as a research assistant and postman, took up a NERC funded PhD in sexual conflict at University College London (2001-2005). I continued at UCL for a BBSRC funded post-doc (2005-2008) where I investigated the mechanisms underlying mating costs in Drosophila, and expanded my research to include subjects such as immunity and sperm competition. I spent the summer of 2008 visiting Cornell University on a Human Frontier Science Foundation Short-Term Fellowship and began at Oxford in October, on a Lloyd's Tercentenary Fellowship.

Research Activities

I am broadly interested in the evolutionary biology of reproduction, and my research covers sexual selection, sexual conflict, speciation, sperm competition, mating and immunity, life history and ageing. I use the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model organism to investigate these topics. My current and future investigations include:

• The proximate and evolutionary factors that affect male investment in mating
• The genes and molecules that control mating behaviour in females
• The co-evolution of male and female mating strategies
• The effect of the environment on the strength of sexual selection

For more information about my research and for pdfs of publications, see my alternative website here.

Selected Recent Papers

Barnes, A. I.*, Wigby, S.*, Boone, J. M., Partridge, L., and T. Chapman. 2008. Feeding, fecundity and lifespan in female Drosophila melanogaster. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 275: 1675-1683 | Read online

Wigby, S., Dominskaya, E., Choffat, Y, Kubi, E. and T. Chapman. 2008. The effect of mating on immunity can be masked by experimental piercing in female Drosophila melanogaster. J. Insect Physiol 54: 414-420 | Read online

Linklater, J. R., Wertheim, B., Wigby, S., and T. Chapman. 2007. Ejaculate depletion patterns in male D. melanogaster selected under increased and decreased levels of sperm competition. Evolution 61: 2027-2034 | Read online

Lawniczak, M. K., Barnes, A. I., Linklater, J. R., Boone, J. M., Wigby, S., and T. Chapman. 2007. Mating and immunity in invertebrates. Trends Ecol. Evol. 22: 48-55 | Read online

Wigby, S., and T. Chapman. 2006. No evidence that experimental manipulation of sexual conflict drives premating reproductive isolation in Drosophila melanogaster. J. Evol. Biol. 19:1033-1039 | Read online

Wigby, S., and T. Chapman. 2005. Sex peptide causes mating costs in female Drosophila melanogaster. Current Biology 15:316-321 | Read online

Wigby, S., and T. Chapman. 2004. Female resistance to male harm evolves in response to manipulation of sexual conflict. Evolution 58:1028-1037 | Read online

Wigby, S., and T. Chapman. 2004. Sperm competition. Current Biology 14:R100-102| Read online

Click here to view my PubMed listings