Megan Nicholl: PhD student 2022 - present
Project: Nature vs Nurture: The inheritance of behaviours
I started my academic career studying Animal Biology at the University of Stirling. Growing up as the daughter of a butcher, I had always been far more interested in the anatomy and physiology of animals than their behaviour. This changed during my final year project, when I was given my own bumblebee colony to investigate the effects of aging on parasite susceptibility. When I realised I was more excited about researching their eusociality than their physiology, I decided to pursue an MSc in Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology.
I completed my MSc at the University of Exeter, under the supervision of Professor Mike Cant, Dr Faye Thompson and Dr Patrick Green. Here, I investigated how groups of banded mongooses behave collectively to defend themselves during simulated conflicts with rival groups. We found that the diversity of defensive behaviours within groups increased in the presence of rival stimuli (scents, vocal calls & live individuals), demonstrating that a coordinated collective response does not necessarily require all individuals to behave in the same way.
Following this project, my PhD research will focus on what drives these individual differences in behaviour. Variation in behaviour suggests that individuals must fundamentally differ in their personalities. It has long been debated as to how much these differences derive from genes (nature) vs the environment (nurture) and separating the two has been historically difficult since parents often raise their own young.
Banded mongooses, however, live in social groups that have adopt a ‘natural cross-fostering’ system, whereby pups form one-to-one relationships with unrelated individuals who become their ‘cultural role model’. This means we can use a double pedigree to separate which personality traits are genetically inherited via parents from those which are culturally inherited through social learning via role models. Once this has been determined, I aim to investigate what features of a personality trait make it more liable to be inherited by these different routes of inheritance. I hope this research will further our understanding of how personalities are passed between generations and therefore how they evolve.
I started my academic career studying Animal Biology at the University of Stirling. Growing up as the daughter of a butcher, I had always been far more interested in the anatomy and physiology of animals than their behaviour. This changed during my final year project, when I was given my own bumblebee colony to investigate the effects of aging on parasite susceptibility. When I realised I was more excited about researching their eusociality than their physiology, I decided to pursue an MSc in Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology.
I completed my MSc at the University of Exeter, under the supervision of Professor Mike Cant, Dr Faye Thompson and Dr Patrick Green. Here, I investigated how groups of banded mongooses behave collectively to defend themselves during simulated conflicts with rival groups. We found that the diversity of defensive behaviours within groups increased in the presence of rival stimuli (scents, vocal calls & live individuals), demonstrating that a coordinated collective response does not necessarily require all individuals to behave in the same way.
Following this project, my PhD research will focus on what drives these individual differences in behaviour. Variation in behaviour suggests that individuals must fundamentally differ in their personalities. It has long been debated as to how much these differences derive from genes (nature) vs the environment (nurture) and separating the two has been historically difficult since parents often raise their own young.
Banded mongooses, however, live in social groups that have adopt a ‘natural cross-fostering’ system, whereby pups form one-to-one relationships with unrelated individuals who become their ‘cultural role model’. This means we can use a double pedigree to separate which personality traits are genetically inherited via parents from those which are culturally inherited through social learning via role models. Once this has been determined, I aim to investigate what features of a personality trait make it more liable to be inherited by these different routes of inheritance. I hope this research will further our understanding of how personalities are passed between generations and therefore how they evolve.