Nicholas Priest

Biography

Nicholas Priest is a professor belongs to the department of Biology & Biochemistry from the university of Bath.

Research Interest

Current Research How are sexes maintained? Why do males of many species harm their mates? Why and how does aging occur? These questions are usually addressed by separate fields (Sex, Conflict & Aging), but I think of them as specific cases of the more general problem of how traits are expressed and how they evolve. The research in the Priest lab lies at the interface of evolution, behavioural ecology, reproductive physiology and molecular genetics. Much of this work involves parental effects, which occur when the physiology and genotype of mothers influence trait expression in offspring. We have found that older mothers produce offspring with reduced longevity in fruit flies. We have found that maternal exposure to toxic compounds in male seminal fluid stimulates parental effects which improve the fitness of daughters. We have also found that mating increases the rate of genetic recombination in the maternal genome. Population genetic theory and life history models that we have constructed show that parental effects can alter the rate, direction, and endpoint of phenotypic evolution. These findings indicate that parental effects have an integral role in trait expression and evolution.