SEMINAR: Lover or fighter: you can�t have it all

Bio: Leigh received his PhD from Nottingham University in 1986 and held a series of postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Liverpool until 1995 when he moved to UWA. He was awarded an ARC Federation Fellowship in 2004 and was elected to the Australian Academy in 2009. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioral Ecology, Editor of Advances in the Study of Behavior, and on the editorial board of Journal of Ethology.

Overview: Broadly my research focuses on the evolutionary process of sexual selection, and its effects on the evolution of animal form and function. Evolutionary theory is based on the fundamental assumption that organisms are constrained by a trade-off that limits the allocation of resources to different fitness enhancing traits. I will first give a general introduction to sexual selection, before briefly outline some theoretical models used to predict the evolution of male sexual traits in the face of allocation trade-offs. I will then provide some empirical studies that have sought to test these predictions.