Division of labour evolves when cooperating individuals specialise in order to carry out specific tasks; in some special cases, organisms have evolved to divide labour between a reproductive and a non-reproductive phenotype (castes). I am interested in trying to explain variation across species both in whether there is division of labour and if so, the form that it takes. Why does division of labour emerge in some species but not others, and why does the number of different castes vary across species?
Additional affiliations
BBSRC Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP
