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The work on animal sex is being done in fishes and specifically on swordtails. In this species, males have a long tail called a ‘sword’ which females do not have (see pictures below). I typically put a female in a tank on her own and then I show her videos of different males  to see which one she spends more time interacting with. I then show her a video of a scary predator, followed by videos of the same males again to see if this changes who the females prefer.

Another thing I’m currently working on is parental care in insects. I study what makes some parents better or worse than others and whether the offspring of good parents perform better later in life. I’m also interested in the conflict between parents and offspring, as well as the competition between siblings.

For my work on insects, I pair up males and females so that they mate and produce offspring. I then watch each of these families, recording the growth rates of the babies and the behaviour of the parents to see how involved they are in taking care of their offspring. I then track these offspring until they grow up to become adults and have their own babies to see if their parenting abilities match those of their parents. So my typical day involves watching parents feeding their babies and weighing the offspring at different developmental stages.