Prof Stephen Montgomery

I grew up in the great city of Belfast and studied Natural Sciences as an undergrad at Cambridge. I stayed on to do a PhD on primate brain evolution with Nick Mundy, then joined Judith Mank’s lab, briefly in Oxford and then at UCL, under successive early-career fellowships from The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and The Leverhulme Trust. During this time I started a series of projects on brain evolution in Neotropical butterflies that developed into the research we work on now. The lab was founded through funding from NERC and the ERC, initially back to the Zoology department at Cambridge in 2016, before we moved to join the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol in 2019.

Our lab is interested in animal behaviour, evolutionary neurobiology and genomics, sensory and neuroecology - basically as many aspects of biology as we can find an excuse to work on!

From August 2026 I will take up Prince Philip Professorship in Ecology and Evolution in the Zoology Department in Cambridge.

Research

Evolutionary innovation and refinement of neural systems underpins much of the diversity in behaviour, sensory and cognitive abilities that we see across animal life. Evolutionary processes act on variation in these behavioural outcomes rather than the neural traits that underpin them, but the adaptive landscape of behaviour is likely shaped in part by functional variation, costs and constraints imposed by neural traits. This places the interaction between neural systems and organismal behaviour at the heart of many ecological and evolutionary processes. The aim of our research is to understand these interactions, how they shape adaptive neural evolution, and how they define how individuals behave, and diversity evolves.

Our approach is to address these aims by considering natural variation in neural systems, their developmental origins and ecological context. Increasingly, new techniques make developing new, integrative models of neural evolution a realistic prospect. A critical first step is identifying axes of neural variation across tractable species that have high potential to offer novel insights into fundamental biological processes that regulate the development and evolution of such highly complex systems. We have done so by leveraging adaptive radiations of species with well-described, variable ecologies, behavioural innovations and emerging experimental tractability. The diversity and tractability of insects make them particularly well suited to integrative studies of neural evolution set within clear, phylogenetic and ecological frameworks, but we also have on-going projects focused on vertebrate radiations. Our work combines approaches across the biological sciences - from behaviour and ecology, to neuroanatomy, development and genomics - experiments in the lab, insectaries and field, and studies of individuals, populations and across broad phylogenies.

Publications

Key publications:

A) Evolutionary neurobiology and cognition:

•   Farnworth M, Loupasaki T, Couto A, Montgomery SH. Mosaic evolution of a learning and memory circuit in Heliconiini butterflies. Curr. Biol. (2024) 33(22): 5252-5262.e5.
•   Young FJ, Alcalde Anton A, Melo-Florez L, Couto A, Foley J, Monllor, McMillan WO, Montgomery SH. Enhanced long-term memory and increased mushroom body plasticity in Heliconius butterflies. iScience (2024) 27 (2): 108949.
•   Moura PA*, Young FJ*, Cardoso MZ, Montgomery SH. Long-term spatial memory, across large spatial scales, in Heliconius butterflies. Curr. Biol. (2023) 33 (15): PR797-R798. *contributed equally
•   Couto A, Young FJ, Atzeni D, Marty S, Melo-Florez L, Hebberecht L, Monllor M, Neal C, Cicconardi F, McMillan WO, Montgomery SH. Rapid expansion and visual specialization of learning and memory centers in Heliconiini butterflies. Nat. Comms. (2023) 14: 4024
•   Cicconardi F, Milanetti E, Pinheiro de Castro EC, Mazo-Vargas A, Belleghem SM, Ruggieri AA, Rastas P, Hanly JJ, Evans E, Jiggins CD, McMillan WO, Papa R, di Marino D, Martin A, Montgomery SH. Evolutionary dynamics of genome size and content during the adaptive radiation of Heliconiini butterflies. Nat. Comms. (2023) 14: 5620.

B) Sensory neuroecology of niche partitioning and ecological divergence:
•   Wainwright JB, Loupasaki T, Ramírez F, Penry-Williams IL, England SJ, Barker A, Meier JI, How MJ, Roberts NW, Troscianko J, Montgomery SH. Mutualisms within light microhabitats are associated with sensory convergence in a mimetic butterfly community. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (2025) 122 (29) e2422397122
•   Rivas-Sanchez DF, Salazar C, Pardo-Diaz C, Merrill RM, Montgomery SH. Repeated Evolution of reduced visual investment at the onset of ecological speciation in high-altitude Heliconius butterflies. Evol. Lett. (2025) qraf017
•   Montgomery SH, Rossi M, McMillan WO, Merrill RM. Neural divergence and hybrid disruption between ecologically isolated Heliconius butterflies. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (2021) 118 (6) e20151-2118

C) Evolution, genetics and sensory neuroecology of social behaviour:
•   Cicconardi F, McLellan CF, Segueret A, McMillan WO, Montgomery SH. Convergent molecular evolution associated with repeated transitions to gregarious larval behaviour in Heliconiini. Mol. Biol. Evol. (2025) 42 (8): msaf179
•   Couto A, Marty S, Dawson EH, d’Ettorre P, Sandoz J-C, Montgomery SH. Evolution of the neuronal substrate for kin recognition in social Hymenoptera. Biol. Rev. (2023) 98 (6): 2226-2242.
•   McLellan CF, Montgomery SH.Towards an integrative approach to understanding collective behaviour in caterpillars. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B. (2023) 378 (1874): 20220072.

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