Stu West

Research Interests

I am an evolutionary biologist whose main interest is the evolution of social behaviours, such as cooperation, altruism, spite, mutualism, parasite virulence and sex allocation. I use a mixture of techniques including theory, experiment and across species comparative studies. My empirical work utilises a range of organisms, including bacteria, protozoa, insects (especially parasitoid wasps), fish, birds and mammals.

Other Interests

I am an editor at the American Naturalist, Evolution and the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. I am the Department of Zoology's Athena Swan Champion.

Contacts

Websites

• http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/group/west/index.html

Selected Publications

• West, S.A. (2009) Sex Allocation. Princeton University Press (Monograph in Population Biology)
• Diggle, S.P., Griffin, A.S., Campbell, G.S. & West, S.A. (2007) Cooperation and conflict in quorum-sensing bacterial populations. Nature 450, 411-414
• West, S.A., Griffin, A.S., Gardner, A. & Diggle, S.P. (2006) Social evolution theory for microbes. Nature Reviews Microbiology 4, 597-607
• Griffin, A.S., West, S.A. & Buckling, A. (2004) Cooperation and competition in pathogenic bacteria. Nature, 430, 1024-1027
• Griffin, A.S. & West, S.A. (2003) Kin discrimination and the benefit of helping in cooperatively breeding vertebrates. Science, 302, 634-636
• West, S.A. & Sheldon, B.C. (2002) Constraints in the evolution of sex ratio adjustment. Science, 295, 1685-1688