Some of the most famous time series in population ecology describe beautiful oscillations in population size, including our favourite flour beetles. Even in the absence of external forces (such as predation) such oscillations are not uncommon, and are typically attributed to negative density dependence. As populations become more crowded, the growth rate drops, and this... Continue Reading →
We are starting 2023 on a great footing, with a new paper reporting a lot of really nice work by Vrinda and Gaurav. For a long time we have been puzzled by seemingly maladaptive oviposition behaviours of female flour beetles faced with different resource options. By carefully manipulating egg allocation across resource patches, we were... Continue Reading →
Here's the latest from Imroze and Arun. A couple years ago we had found surprising levels of variability in immune memory ("priming"), across 10 wild-collected flour beetle populations (Khan et al 2016, Ecology and Evolution). In our new follow-up paper, we figured out what may explain this variation, by systematically analysing change in various fitness... Continue Reading →
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