about the lab

Our research group, led by Dr Natalie Pilakouta, is based at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Aberdeen. Two major themes in our research are (i) how environmental change may alter animal behaviour and (ii) whether such changes in animal behaviour influence the capacity of populations to adapt to environmental change.

We mainly use insect and fish study systems to address fundamental questions in ecology and evolutionary biology, as well as more applied issues relevant to management and conservation. Our research integrates behavioural ecology, evolutionary biology, ecophysiology, and developmental biology. Some of the approaches we use are experimental evolution, field-based studies, molecular biology techniques, theoretical modeling, and meta-analytic methods. If you are interested in joining the lab, click here for more information and any open positions.

news

October 2020 ― Natalie has joined the Functional Ecology Editorial Board as an Associate Editor!

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October 2020 ― A warm welcome to Karendeep Sidhu, who has just joined the lab as a QUADRAT PhD student! She will be studying sexual selection under climate change using a combination of experimental, theoretical, and meta-analytic approaches

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September 2020 ― This month, we welcome two new lab members! Charlotte Patterson and Nikki Watt are doing Honours thesis projects on parental care

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August 2020 ― New bioRxiv preprint on the predictability of morphological evolution in contrasting thermal environments

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June 2020 ― Congratulations to Anais Baillet who has successfully defended her Master's thesis!

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February 2020 ― New paper in Functional Ecology on metabolic rate evolution in different thermal environments

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January 2020 ― Anais Baillet, a visiting student from University of Rennes, has joined the lab! For the next five months, she will be working on a project looking at the effects of temperature on mating behaviour

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