My research interests primarily focussed on the evolution and plasticity of animal behaviour, along with the environmental, social, genetic, epigenetic and physiological mechanisms that control it. I am interested in cooperation and conflict in the animal kingdom and how conflicts are resolved on evolutionary and individual timescales. My undergraduate disseration investigated the genetic diversity of bat populations in Honduran cloud forest; my masters research project looked at the relationship between personality and intelligence in Zebra finches. My doctoral research focussed on cooperation and conflict in social insects, in particular looking at division of labour, social dominance and reproductive conflict in the dinosaur ant, Dinoponera quadriceps.
I completed my undergraduate studies in Biology at the University of Sussex, and went on to do a Masters in Evolutionary and Behaviural Ecology at Exeter University's Cornwall Campus. My PhD research was conducted at the Unversity of Leeds, the Institute of Zoology and the Universidade Federal de Sergipe (Brazil).
Patalano et al (2015) Molecular signatures of plastic phenotypes in two eusocial insect species with simple societies Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2015, 42(112) 13970 - 13975 doi:10.1073/pnas.1515937112
Sadd et al (2015) The genomes of two key bumblebee species with primitive eusocial organization Genome Biology 2015, 16:76 doi:10.1186/s13059-015-0623-3
Grainger et al (2014) A Novel Method of Assessing Dominance Hierarchies Shows Nuance, Linearity and Stability in the Dinosaur Ant Dinoponera quadriceps Ethology 120(11): 1073 - 1080
Asher et al (2013) Division of Labour and Risk Taking in the Dinosaur Ant, Dinoponera quadriceps (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Myrmecological News 18: 121 - 129
Asher (2009) Patterns of genetic diversity in populations of two bat species (Sturnira ludovici and Artibeus toltecus) in Cusuco National Park, Honduras Bioscience Horizons 2 (2): 147-154.
