I graduated from my bachelor's with integrated master's degree in Biology at Sheffield in 2016. During my degree I became interested in behavioural ecology and the study of social behaviour. For my master's project I worked with Prof Ben Hatchwell on social behaviour in the cooperatively breeding sociable weaver, conducting observations and experiments in the field to investigate their kin recognition system. Before commencing my DPhil I spent three months working as a field assistant with the Blue-throated Macaw Project in Bolivia assisting with population monitoring and behavioural research in this critically endangered species.
Current Research
I am currently a DPhil student on the NERC Environmental Research DTP. For my DPhil I am looking into the interaction between sexual selection and parental care. Sexual selection is often assumed to act most strongly on the less caring sex, yet there are multiple contexts in which sexually selected behaviours and traits can evolve in caring parents. I am using a combination of comparative, observational and experimental work in fish to better understand the role of sexual selection in both the evolution of male-only parental care and the evolution of female competitive traits.
Publications
Goldberg, R., Downing, P., Griffin, A., Green, J. 2020. The costs and benefits of paternal care in fish: a meta-analysis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 287: 20201759
Burt, A., Raguain, J., Sanchez, C., Brice, J., Fleischer-Dogley, F., Goldberg, R. et al. The costs of removing the unsanctioned import of marine plastic litter to small island states. 2020. Scientific Reports 10(1): 14458
