Symbiotic associations shape all organisms on Earth and the core research interests in the Social andd Symbiotic Evolution Group are to understand

• How antagonistic (parasitic) and beneficial (mutualistic) microbial symbionts shape host ecology and evolution
• How complementary partnerships evolve and are stable over millions of years of evolutionary time
• How sustainable defences against exploitation of host-symbiont associations evolve.

To test hypotheses around these research interests, we integrate a range of tools including field studies, behavioural observations, microbial isolations, molecular biology, (meta)genomics.