Hello! My name is Benjamin Jarrett, and I am a new post-doc working with Erik Svensson.
I am interested in the evolutionary consequences of social interactions and particularly how social interactions might play a role in niche evolution. I find insects fascinating and have worked on burying beetles, leafhoppers, and parasitoid wasps of both flies and bugs.
My research while in Lund focuses on exploring how host plant use influences male-male competition, and how the change in sexual selection dynamics might shift resource use. I am using a leaf-footed bug for this project, which belongs to a family of true bug where males have enlarged hind femurs that they use to fight one another for territories. I am working in collaboration with Dr Christine Miller at the University of Florida and I am funded for three years by a Human Frontiers Science Program fellowship.
I did a two-year post doc at Michigan State University in the lab of Dr Marianna Szucs investigating the evolution of host shifts in parasitoid wasps in the context of biological control. My PhD, at the University of Cambridge with Prof. Rebecca Kilner, investigated the evolutionary consequences of a change in parental care using experimental evolution of burying beetles.
I look forward to chatting with you all over coffee and beers, possibly about how dismal Arsenal or the England cricket team have been that week.
