Andy Gardner
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andygardner.bsky.social
Andy Gardner
@andygardner.bsky.social
950 followers 710 following 21 posts
Evolution | Theory | Social Evolution | Population Genetics | Behavioural Ecology | Kin Selection | Multilevel Selection | Inclusive Fitness | Sex Ratio | Altruism | Professor of Biology at University of St Andrews, Scotland.
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andygardner.bsky.social
Join us for Part 2 of the "Advances" symposium today, from 11am in Room 129+130. #ESEB2025
August 19, 2025 at 8:01 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
And Chedhawat Chokechaipaisarn, whose poster "The consequences of constrained sex allocation under local mate competition" (P02.036) is in Tuesday's session.

This is based on his recent paper in Journal of Evolutionary Biology:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

@jevbio.bsky.social @eseb2025.bsky.social
Photo of Chedhawat Chokechaipaisarn
August 18, 2025 at 7:47 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
Two other members of the research group have successfully made it to @eseb2025.bsky.social ahead of me.

Look out for @kztwyman.bsky.social, whose poster "A formal theory of group-level adaptation for obligate eusociality" (P01.068) is in this evening's session.
Photo of Kalyani Twyman.
August 18, 2025 at 7:42 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
Finally on my way to #ESEB2025, a day late, following flight cancellation...

Disappointed to miss 1st day of talks, but happy that S03.01 "Advances in technology..." is in @ju-morimoto.bsky.social's safe hands.

Starting 10.30am, Meeting Room 129+130, with invited talk by @kokkonut.bsky.social.
Programme for Part I of the Symposium "Advances in technology, mathematical and statistical models and their application in evolutionary ecology: the dawn of a new era", including talks by Hanna Kokko, Szymon Drobniak, Aurelien Tellier, Yuxin Ning and Md Ruhul Armin.
August 18, 2025 at 7:36 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "The consequences of constrained sex allocation in diploids and haplodiploids under local mate competition", with Chedhawat Chokechaipaisarn:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

@jevbio.bsky.social
Figure 1. Unbeatable sex allocation strategy of unconstrained females (r*) as a function of proportion of constrained females (p) under local mate competition with two foundresses colonising the patch. Shown are the result for Godfray’s (1990) erroneous diploidy solution (dashed grey line), our corrected diploidy solution (solid grey line), and our haplodiploidy solution (solid black line). Overlaid are results from individual-based simulations (discs).
July 9, 2025 at 8:30 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: “The clonality window: relatedness and the group covariance effect in the evolution of division of labour”, with @kztwyman.bsky.social #OpenAccess

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

@journal-evo.bsky.social #Image: #ChatGPT #Evolution #OA
AI-generated image using the paper's title and abstract as input.
May 7, 2025 at 6:59 PM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "Kin-discriminating partner choice promotes the evolution of helping"

with Tom Scott (@tomwscott.bsky.social) & Geoff Wild (@geoffwild.bsky.social) #OpenAccess

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

@journal-evo.bsky.social #Image: #ChatGPT #Evolution #OA
February 17, 2025 at 9:45 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "Kin competition drives the evolution of earlier metamorphosis", with @bingdongevo.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.1002/ece3...
January 15, 2025 at 8:05 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
Chedhawat (Tim) has given an online seminar about this sex-ratio work, here:

cassyni.com/events/K7vsZ...
A slide from Tim's talk, featuring a schematic showing how haplodiploid inheritance works, with mothers contributing genes to sons and daughters, and fathers contributing genes only to daughters.
November 7, 2024 at 2:38 PM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "Density-dependent dispersal reduces conflict over the sex ratio" (OpenAccess), w/ Chedhawat Chokechaipaisarn.

doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Sex-ratio optima for haplodiploid parents converge in viscous populations when dispersal is density-dependent.
A portion of the title page of the paper. The Abstract reads: Haplodiploids—in particular, wasps—are the workhorses of sex-allocation research. This is owing to their unusual system of sex determination, which provides a ready means of sex ratio adjustment. Notably, their sexually asymmetrical mode of genetic inheritance leads mothers and fathers to come into conflict over the sex ratio of their offspring. In the simplest outbreeding scenario, a mother is favoured to employ an even sex ratio while a father prefers that all his mate’s offspring are female. An important modulator of evolutionary conflict between mating partners is genetic relatedness, raising the possibility that this sex ratio conflict is reduced in low-dispersal settings with mating occurring between relatives. However, the impact of population viscosity on sex ratio conflict in haplodiploids remains unknown. Here, we develop and analyse a kin-selection model to investigate how the rate of dispersal modulates sex ratio conflict in a haplodiploid, viscous population setting. We find that population viscosity is associated with a reduction in the extent of sex ratio conflict—the effect being very weak under density-independent dispersal and much stronger under density-dependent dispersal.
October 30, 2024 at 9:33 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
One of my undergraduate students, Callum Ferrando, has just published a comic in Journal of Evolutionary Biology. You can find "Taylor's famous result" here:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

@jevbio.bsky.social @uniofstandrews.bsky.social
October 1, 2024 at 5:54 PM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "Kin selection as a modulator of human handedness: sex-specific, parental & parent-of-origin effects" (#OpenAccess), with Bing Dong & Silvia Paracchini (@silparacchini.bsky.social):

doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

#OA #Image commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cu...
Rock art at Cueva de las Manos, Santa Cruz Province. From Wikipedia: "Cueva de las Manos (Spanish for Cave of the Hands or Cave of Hands) is a cave and complex of rock art sites in the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina, 163 km (101 mi) south of the town of Perito Moreno. It is named for the hundreds of paintings of hands stenciled, in multiple collages, on the rock walls."
August 27, 2024 at 1:58 PM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "Transmission of social status drives cooperation and offspring philopatry", with Antonio Rodrigues (Open Access)

doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
November 29, 2023 at 10:34 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "Sexual antagonism in sequential hermaphrodites", w/ Thomas Hitchcock (@imprintedgene.bsky.social) *Open Access*

doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Am...
Image of clown anemonefish.
November 22, 2023 at 10:48 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "A geometric approach to the evolution of altruism" (OpenAccess)

sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Altruism alleles are disfavoured upon their first appearance in the population, when they are not yet shared by kin. This slows the evolution of altruism.
A figure from the paper, showing the probability of fixation for alleles of different effect sizes in altruism versus nonsocial scenarios.
November 6, 2023 at 10:37 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
Registration & abstract submission now open for PopGroup 57, 8-10 Jan 2024 in St Andrews:

populationgeneticsgroup.org.uk
October 25, 2023 at 8:44 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
This paper is published Open Access, but it's worth pointing out that *all* of the Royal Society's journal content is freely available just now, for "Open Access Week":

royalsociety.org/journals/
October 25, 2023 at 8:19 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
For more background, see:

doi.org/10.1098/rstb...
September 28, 2023 at 9:16 AM
andygardner.bsky.social
New paper: "R.A. Fisher on J.A. Cobb's The Problem of the Sex-Ratio" (OpenAccess)

hdl.handle.net/10023/28453

"Fisher's principle" of the sex ratio was first given by Cobb in 1914. Here I show that Fisher was aware of Cobb's paper.
Notes and Records: the Royal Society journal of the history of science.
September 28, 2023 at 9:13 AM