Gwendolyn David 

Research Interests

               Deception has been one of the most controversial topics in animal communication. Many models search to explanation how unreliable and deceptive signalling can persist in nature, and exist as an evolutionary stable strategy. I am interested in testing and investigating further, these models of signal unreliability and deception using a unique and advantageous model system, Football. 

               In Football, fouling of opponents and associated simulation (diving) is a common feature of football (soccer) that can substantially impact the outcome of the game, player fitness, quality of a game, its perceived fairness, and the game’s worldwide marketability. The ‘signaller’ (the player) creates a ‘signal’ (the fall) to the ‘receiver’ (the referee). This signal can be ‘honest’ and a true reflection of the signaller’s underlying state (ie. that the contact made by the player’s opponent caused the fall), or ‘dishonest’ and not reflect the signaller’s underlying state (ie. that the contact did not cause the fall). If the receiver responds (referee calls the foul) it must decipher if the signal was honest or dishonest and award/punish accordingly.

Honours (Supervisors: Dr. Cynthia Riginos & Dr. Dustin Marshall)

               For my honours work I examined spatial genetic structure across latitudes in the marine ascidian Styela plicata. Many empirical studies have demonstrated that increases in temperature can shorten planktonic larval duration. A short pelagic larval duration is expected to shorten dispersal in the wild and thus increase the strength of spatial genetic structure among individuals. We used latitude as a proxy for temperature and tested the hypothesis that spatial genetic structure is negatively correlated with latitude. Significant spatial genetic structure was detected, and found to decrease with increasing latitude, as predicted. These results suggested that there is a latitudinal cline of dispersal in S. plicata and provided support for the expectation that increases in temperature could limit dispersal in the wild. 

Other Interests

               Outside of uni-related activities, I enjoy playing soccer for UQ (www.uqsoccer.org.au), watching cockatoos squawk and playing with big cats.

Research Publications

G. David, D. J. Marshall and C. Riginos. (2010) Latitudinal variability in spatial genetic structure in the invasive ascidian, Styela plicata. Marine Biology (in press)

Conferences