Complex Ecological and Evolutionary Systems

Dr Andrew L Jackson

Leader of the Complex Ecological and Evolutionary Systems research group & Principal Investigator in the Ecological and Evolutionary Networks cluster, Behavioural and Evolutionary Ecology Group & member of the Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research

Follow @yodacomplex

Research Interests

My research interests lie in understanding ecological systems from an evolutionary perspective. I tend to approach these questions by using computational / mathematical models to understand how the nuts and bolts of these sytsems work. Much of my current research focuses on understanding interactions among individual animals living in close proximity. These situations are well suited to analysis and simulation in computer models where each individual animal can be represented as an automaton which interacts with its local neighbours or physico-chemical environment according to some simple set of rules. My interests also extend to community ecology where the challenge is to understand how communities of organisms and species compete and interact with what is often a self-organising and stable system. I have several projects running at the moment on a variety of topics.

Selected Publications

Healy, K., McNally, L., Ruxton, G.D., Cooper, N. & Jackson, A.L. 2013. Metabolic rate and body size linked with perception of temporal information. Animal Behaviour, 86(4), 685-696 doi

Wakefield, E.D., Bodey, T.W., Bearhop, S., Blackburn, J., Colhoun, K., Davies, R., Dwyer, R.G., Green, J., Grémillet, D., Jackson, A.L., Jessopp, M.J., Kane, A., Langston, R.H.W., Lescroël, A., Murray, S., Le Nuz, M., Patrick, S.C., Péron, C., Soanes, L., Wanless, S., Votier, S.C., & Hamer, K.C. 2013. Space Partitioning Without Territoriality in Gannets. Science, 341(6141), 68-70. doi

McNally, L., Jackson, A.L. 2013. Cooperation creates selection for tactical deception. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 280(1762), doi

Donohue, I., Petchey, O.L., Montoya, J.M., Jackson, A.L., McNally, L., Viana, M., Healy, K., Lurgi, M., O’Connor, N.E. & Emmerson, M.C. 2013. On the dimensionality of ecological stability. Ecology Letters. doi

Viana, M., Jackson, A.L., Graham, N. & Parnell, A.C. 2013. Disentangling spatio-temporal processes in a hierarchical system: a case study in fisheries data. Ecography, 36(5), 569-578 doi

McNally, L., Brown, S.P. & Jackson, A.L. 2012. Cooperation and the evolution of intelligence. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 279, 3027-3034. doi (Open Access).

Parnell, A.C., Inger R., Bearhop, S. & Jackson, A.L. 2010. Source partitioning using stable isotopes: coping with too much variation. PLoS ONE, 5(3) e9672 . doi

» full list of publications

Teaching

• Zoology, Senior Sophister Data Handling ZO4030
• Zoology, Senior Sophister Life in Numbers ZO4005
• MSc, Data Handling BD7054
• A video podcast course in the R statistical programming language (for all)

Opportunities

There are several personal awards available in Ireland (e.g. IRCSET) that allow people to pursue a PhD or post-doctoral research through scholarships nd fellowships. I am open to suggestions if someone has specific ideas (preferably but not exclusively with some modelling element) about what they want to do, or some possible areas include:

• Modelling the evolution of bone growth and development - combining genetic algorithms with finite element models.
• Development of new metrics of community structure - in particular developing mathematical, statistical or computational models of community stability in collaboration with Ian Donohue.
• The evolution of information transfer in groups: how do individuals reconcile their own personal information with that obtained from their group-mates? For this line of research I would like to start introducing information processing limitations into models of collective behaviour. Prof Iain Couzin has several inspiring podcasts explaining collective behaviour if you want to get a quick introduction.

Contact

Mail: Zoology Building, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
Email: a.jackson(at)tcd.ie, Tel: + 353 1 896 2728, Fax: + 353 1 6778094