Professor Ashleigh Griffin, University of Oxford

Location: Bourne Lecture Theatre 2

Groups of individuals that cooperate with one another to survive and reproduce can look similar to one another, even when very different evolutionary processes are driving them. In this talk, I’ll present evidence from cooperatively breeding birds to show that the way groups are formed in the first place can lead to very important differences between superficially similar cooperative systems. And I may expand on this to talk about group formation in multicellular systems… we’ll see!

Most species of cooperative breeder recruit helpers from fledged chicks from previous broods. The cooperatively breeding guirra cuckoo forms groups by aggregating together as adults. Different means to the same end. Does it matter?

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