I am an evolutionary biologist mostly interested in the evolution of parental care.
My research focuses on the co-evolution between traits involved in male parental care and reproduction, both from males and females’ perspectives. I am particularly interested in species in which males make a great direct contribution to the offspring’s fitness.
My career began with a great focus on empirical work with arachnids that exhibit male-only care, dedicating particular attention to natural history observation and experimental manipulation under natural conditions.
More recently, I have been incorporating theoretical approaches into my research, working on mathematical models of male reproductive allocation strategies (i.e., sperm competition games), in which males must partition limited resources between mating, fertilization and parental effort.
By engaging in cross-disciplinary activities between Math and Biology, my research integrates theory and empirical data into the study of the evolution of parental care.