Griffin Lab

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. 

My current projects fall into three main categories: 

• The application of social evolution theory to understand clinical problems of bacterial infection. 
• The use of comparative analyses to test predictions of social evolution theory in cooperative breeding birds and mammals
• Developing the planarian flatworms as a model system for understanding the evolution of complex multicellularity