Congratulations to Professor Rebecca Kilner, our Head of Department, winner of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) Medal 2024, for her contribution to the science of animal behaviour.
Professor Kilner was delighted to receive the award. She said, ‘I’m bowled over by this huge honour but it’s important to acknowledge that science is a team sport. I've been very lucky throughout my career to work with exceptional and inspirational colleagues. None of the discoveries listed in the citation would have been possible without them.’
Professor Kilner and her group research the evolution of social behaviour, and how that behaviour can, in turn, contribute to evolutionary change.
They have found that social behaviour can act as a ‘hidden’ agent of natural selection in animals from birds to beetles. For example, their work on Burying Beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides), has shown that social behaviour can even contribute to evolution. They found that mildly harmful mutations were more likely to persist in beetle populations that experienced parental care, due to a benign developmental environment, but were quickly lost when care was absent. Thus, her work is now yielding novel general insights about how adaptive social behaviour contributes to further evolutionary change.