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Dr David Fisher

Dr David Fisher
Dr David Fisher
Dr David Fisher

PhD, AHEA, MRes, BSc

Lecturer

Accepting PhDs

About
Email Address
david.fisher@abdn.ac.uk
School/Department
School of Biological Sciences
ORCiD
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Personal Website
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Biography

I study behaviour and the role it plays in evolutionary and ecological processes, with a particular focus on social interactions. My works involves observations of wild animals, experiments in invertebrates in the laboratory, as well as simulation studies and reviews of statistical methods such as social network analysis. I also have an interest in the importance of social interactions in plants, the welfare of captive and farmed invertebrates, and how changing climates impact animal populations. Please get in touch if you would like to know more or to discuss opportunities to work with me.

Previously I worked at McMaster University (Canada), looking at the heritability and evolution of group traits in social spiders, and at the University of Guelph (Canada), studying North American red squirrels in the Yukon. I completed my PhD at the University of Exeter (Cornwall campus), and my Masters at the University of Liverpool.

Memberships and Affiliations

Internal Memberships

I am the program coordinator for the Animal Behaviour BSc.

 

I work on the School of Biological Sciences Retention committee, looking for ways we can improve student continuation rates.

External Memberships

I am the Pre-print Editor for Evolution Letters

A member of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology, the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour, the British Ecological Society, the Animal Welfare Research Network, and the British Arachnological Society.

Latest Publications

  • Measuring the effect of RFID and marker recognition tags on cockroach (Blattodea: Blaberidae) behaviour using AI-aided tracking

    Fisher, D.
    Journal of Insect Science
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Indirect genetic effects increase the heritable variation available to selection and are largest for behaviours: a meta-analysis

    Santostefano, F., Moiron, M., Sánchez-Tójar, A., Fisher, D.
    Evolution Letters, qrae051
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Exploring changes in social spider DNA methylation profiles in all cytosine contexts following infection

    Fisher, D., Bechsgaard, J., Bilde, T.
    Heredity
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Indirect genetic effects increase the heritable variation available to selection and are largest for behaviours: a meta-analysis

    Santostefano, F., Moiron, M., Sánchez-Tójar, A., Fisher, D.
    Working Papers: Preprint Papers

  • Indirect genetic effects should make group size more evolvable than expected

    Fisher, D. N.
    Journal of Evolutionary Biology, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 464-470
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

View My Publications

Prizes and Awards

2023: Christopher Barnard Award for Outstanding Contributions by a New Investigator (Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour)

 

2022: Principal's Prize for Outstanding Research and Engagement in the category ECR - STEM (University of Aberdeen)

Research

Research Areas

Accepting PhDs

I am currently accepting PhDs in Biological and Environmental Sciences.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.

Email Me

Biological and Environmental Sciences

Supervising
Accepting PhDs
View Research Area

Research Specialisms

  • Evolution
  • Animal Behaviour
  • Ecology
  • Applied Statistics

Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Current Research

I am currently combining the analysis existing data, the running and analysing pilot studies, and setting up experimental systems. I am analysing long-term study of bottlenose dolphins with researchers at Lighthouse Field station. We are exploring how individual social network traits respond to climate and influence fitness at different levels of social organisation.

I am also developing a cockroach system in the laboratory to explore the ecology and evolution of social interactions. This system is being used to explore questions in dispersal behaviour, disease transmission, and animal welfare.

With colleagues in SBS I am also developing a beadlet anemone system to explore plasticity and adaption in response to hydrocarbon pollution. We have conducted one pilot study and one set of field work to explore how anemones plastically respond to hydrocarbon pollution using various ‘omics approaches, and how populations around the coast of Scotland have evolved in response to different levels of historic hydrocarbon pollution.

Finally, I am working with researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark to identify how social spiders respond to pathogens with ‘omics approaches.

Past Research

My research in the last three years has focused on identifying the role social interactions play in evolutionary change. This has involved exploring indirect genetic effects and multilevel selection in North American red squirrels, social selection in New Zealand giraffe weevils, and several theoretical papers.

I have also recently reviewed how all kinds of social interactions are influenced by changing climates. I am currently starting new projects to explore this topic further.

Alongside the focus on social interactions, I have also been exploring the ecology and evolution of complex traits more generally. This has led to studying selection and heritability of group-level phenotypes in social spiders, and the integration of extended phenotypes into life-history syndromes and fitness components in spiders in Ecuador and North American red squirrels.

Finally, I have worked on cutting edge analytical methods in ecology and evolution. I have reviewed new statistical approaches for analysing social networks and integrating networks and animal behaviour and I was part of a team that published a guide on applying mixed-effects models to ecology and evolution.

Teaching

Teaching Responsibilities

Practical Skills in Animal Behaviour (ZO3813) - Course Coordinator

Behavioural Ecology and Conservation (ZO4543) - Course Coordinator

Behavioural Biology (BI3505) - Lecturer

Experimental Design and Analysis (BI5012) - Lecturer

Publications

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