PERSONAL DETAILS
Name: Philip Ashley Downing
ORCID: 0000-0002-5286-3153
Date of birth: 03/11/1986
Nationality: British
Google Scholar: scholar.google.se/citations?user=igeLuLsAAAAJ&hl=en
Research Gate: www.researchgate.net/profile/Philip_Downing2
EDUCATION AND DEGREES COMPLETED
01/10/2012 – 29/11/2016 PhD UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, Department of Zoology, Oxford, UK
30/09/2010 – 01/08/2011 MSc IMPERIAL COLLEGE, Department of Life Sciences, Silwood Park, UK
25/09/2006 – 13/10/2009 BSc SHEFFIELD UNIVERSITY, Department of Animal & Plant Sciences, UK
POSITIONS
01/12/2016 – present Post-doctoral research fellow LUND UNIVERSITY, Department of Biology, Lund, Sweden
03/09/2011 – 15/08/2012 Researcher UGANDA VIRUS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, Entebbe,Uganda
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
Total citations: 113 (Google scholar, 10/03/20)
8) Downing, P. A., Griffin, A. S., & Cornwallis, C. K. (2020). Group formation and the evolutionary pathway to social complexity in birds. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4: 479-486.
7) Downing, P. A., Griffin, A. S., & Cornwallis, C. K. (2020). The benefits of help in cooperative birds – non-existent or difficult to detect? American Naturalist.
6) Downing, P. A., Griffin, A. S., & Cornwallis, C. K. (2018). Sex differences in helping effort reveal the effect of future reproduction on cooperative behaviour in birds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 285: 20181164.
- Media coverage: Cage & Aviary Birds 5) Sayol, F., Downing, P. A., Iwaniuk, A. N., Maspons, J. & Sol, D. (2018). Predictable evolution towards larger brains in birds colonizing oceanic islands. Nature Communications, 9: 2820.
- Media coverage: National Geographic España and Forbes
- Contribution: data analysis and writing
- Media coverage: National Geographic España and Forbes
- Contribution: data analysis and writing
- 44 citations (Google scholar, 10/03/20)
- Media coverage: ScienceDaily and Times of India
- Contribution: data collection and analysis, writing
- Highlighted Editor's choice in BioEssays
- 38 citations (Google scholar, 10/03/20)
- Text book coverage: Morrison et al. eds. (2018) Ornithology: Foundation, Analysis and Application (Johns Hopkins Press)
SUBMITTED MANUSCRIPTS
Goldberg, R. Downing, P. A., Griffin, A. S., & Green, J. (under review). Paternal care in fish increases mating success but not offspring survival. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
- Contribution: data collection, analysis, writing and training R. Goldberg in phylogenetic meta-analysis
- Contribution: data collection, analysis, writing
PERSONAL RESEARCH FUNDING AND GRANTS
2012-2016 National Environment and Research Council PhD studentship, £44000
2010-2011 National Environment and Research Council scholarship, £5000
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2018 Demonstrator: Using Phylogenetic Trees to Study Trait Evolution, Lund University, Sweden
2015 Statistics tutor: New College, University of Oxford, UK
2015 Demonstrator: Graduate Introduction to R, University of Oxford, UK
2015 Statistics tutor: Keble College, University of Oxford, UK
2014 Statistics tutor: Keble College, University of Oxford, UK
2014 Social evolution tutorials: Lady Margaret Hall, Hertford, St Peter's and Christ Church Colleges, UK
2015 Social evolution tutorials: Lady Margaret Hall, Hertford, St Peter's and Christ Church Colleges, UK
2014 Demonstrator: Oxford undergraduate statistics course, UK 2013
Demonstrator: Oxford undergraduate statistics course, UK
OTHER KEY SCIENTIFIC OR ACADEMIC MERITS
Invited presentations
2020 Group Formation and the Evolutionary Pathway to Social Complexity in Birds. University of Oulu departmental seminar. Host: Heikki Helanterä. Forthcoming.
2020 Life-History Trade-offs in Cooperatively Breeding Birds. 7th Eu. Congress of the IUSSI. Invited symposium speaker. Forthcoming.
2019 Cooperative Birds Provide Evidence for the b Term in Hamilton’s Rule, Meta-analysis course organised by Shinichi Nakagawa, Lund University, Sweden
2015 Using R to Test Hypotheses About the Evolution of Cooperation, Uganda Virus Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda
Conference presentations
2019 The Benefits of Help in Cooperative Birds - non-existent or just difficult to detect? (talk) Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), Turku
2018 Evolution Towards Complex Sociality Depends on How Groups Form (talk), Second Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology, Montpellier, France
2017 Sex Differences in Cooperative Behaviour (talk), OIKOS Nordic Conference, Lund, Sweden
2016 When do Females Help More than Males? (poster) Congress of the International Society of Behavioural Ecology (ISBE), University of Exeter, UK
2015 Long Life, Promiscuity and the Origin of Cooperation in Birds (talk), Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), Lausanne, Switzerland
2015 The Evolution of Cooperation Among Non-kin (talk), European Meeting of PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB), University of Stirling, Scotland
Peer review
American Naturalist; Proceeding of the Royal Society B; Evolution; PLoS ONE; Animal Behavior, Behavioral Ecology; Journal of Ethology; Oikos; Ecology & Evolution; Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology; Current Biology
Outreach activities
2016 Back to the Soup II, BEHIND THE SCENES, The Royal Society, London, UK
This one day event was a repeat of Back to the Soup I whose target audience was school children interested in science. Attended by > 100 people.
2015 Back to the Soup I, SCIENCE LATES, Science Museum, London, UK
In this one day event, I obtained 50 kg of Lego bricks as a donation from the Lego store in London to use as a tool for teaching the public about the Major Transitions in Evolution through the construction of increasingly complex and larger groups. Attended by > 1000 people.
2013 Nice to Kin, Nasty to Neighbours, SCIENCE SLAM, The Old Fire Station, Oxford, UK
A live poetry recital about the impact of genetic relatedness on reproductive competition between male relatives. Attended by > 100 people.
2013 Sperm Competition Between Brothers and Female Choice, Science / AAAS Dance Your Ph.D. winning video. I collaborated in the production of this video.
International collaborations
- Ferran Sayol and Daniel Sol, CREAF, Barcelona, Spain. Phylogenetic comparative analysis of brain size evolution in birds.
- Zahida Sultanova and Pau Carazo, University of Valencia, Spain. Phylogenetic comparative analysis testing whether sexual dimorphism in lifespan in tetrapods is explained by genetic sex determination system.
- Arif Ciloglu (Erciyes Üniversitesi, Turkey) and Vincenzo Ellis (University of Delaware, USA). Phylogenetic study of co-speciation between Haemoproteus parasites and their Acrocephalus hosts.