Variation between individual animals in their behaviour should be influenced by their genes and by their environment. Moreover, an animal's environment should interact with its genes modifying how they are expressed outwardly in the individual's phenotype. Understanding the relative contribution of these two sources of variation is key to understanding the evolution of critical behaviours. One of the most important areas of behavioural variation among individuals is in their fighting ability, because this determines their access to critical resources. In many examples of fighting animals we see variation in aggression and from an evolutionary point of view this is a puzzle. If evolution produces selfish individuals, and high aggression lets them win resources, why do we also see meeker individuals that cannot win against aggressive opponents? A set of theoretical arguments have been made that provide explanations for why we see this range of aggressive behaviour in animal populations. But without data on interactions between genes and environments we can't gauge how well these theories match the real world. Crucially, in fighting and other situations where there is a conflict of interest, an individual's rival (and therefore it's genes) form part of that individual's environment. To fully understand the evolution of aggressive behaviour we therefore have to understand not only the direct genetic contribution to an individual's aggressive behaviour; we also have to understand how this is modified by the behaviour and ultimately the genes of its rival. This effect is known as the 'genotype-by-genotype' interaction effect and at present very little is known about this for any animal, or for any type of conflict behaviour. He we will study genotype-by-genotype interactions in sea anemones. These are very common on the coasts of the UK and they are an excellent species to work on because they reproduce asexually, meaning that we can repeatedly look at fights between different clone-lines. Their fighting behaviour, as well as the outward characters that contribute to fighting ability are well understood. In this project, we will look at genotype-by-genotype interactions, variation in aggression within and between genotypes, the effects of past experiences of fighting and the effects of the degree of relatedness of fighting rivals. In this way we aim to solve long-standing questions about the evolution of aggressive behaviour. By the end of the study we hope to be able to explain why some individuals are more aggressive than others in animals.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

A central task for theoretical physics is explaining how the strange choreography of the microscopic world - the quantum-mechanical dance of electrons - produces the multifarious characteristics of macroscopic stuff: metallicity, magnetism, superconductivity, and so on. Equally crucially, theory should reveal new macroscopic phenomena that have not yet been seen because we did not know to look for them. These are hard tasks, since an atom and a magnet (say) are separated by a staggering jump in scale and complexity. Fortunately, our understanding of quantum mechanics, as applied to assemblages of many interacting particles, is currently exploding. New types of quantum materials are emerging into the light which - unlike a simple magnet - have no analogue in classical physics. (They rely on the "spooky action at a distance" unique to quantum mechanics and ideas from topology - the mathematics of knots, etc.) Separate work has shown that the central assumptions of statistical mechanics fail radically in some strongly disordered (dirty) quantum systems. Simultaneously, we are discovering that phase transitions between different quantum states are far subtler than we thought. The unifying theme for this proposal is a very general picture of physical systems in terms of fluctuating extended objects - for example vortex lines, or flux lines, or 'worldlines' in space- time. Such geometric descriptions are often more useful than descriptions in terms of electrons. For example, certain exotic states (quantum 'spin liquids' and related 'topological paramagnets') are best viewed as as Schrodinger's-cat-like mixtures of different configurations of loops, representing flux lines in a field which emerges miraculously from the dance of the electrons. Using pictures like this, I will tackle such questions as: how do we describe the new types of quantum phase transition theoretically? What do they teach us about quantum field theory? How do we realise the theoretically predicted topological states? How robust are they to perturbations and disorder? These are crucial questions for theoretical physics, which we must answer in order to explain the diversity of material behaviours that emerge from the (deceptively simple) laws of quantum mechanics.

Nanomaterials (NM) are very small particles much less than the width of a human hair. They are synthesised to provide different properties from larger forms of the same material and they are now used in a wide range of products. The properties that NMs provide include enhanced strength, an ability to reflect light or to react with other chemicals, and efficient electrical conductance. The value of NM is now very widely recognised and many companies are starting to use them in common consumer products, such as sunscreens and cosmetics, plus industry products, such as fabrics and building materials. This means that small quantities of NMs will reach the wider environment from everyday product use. A great deal of recent research has gone into assessing the safety of NMs for humans and the environment. Most of these studies have looked at NMs in their newly-manufactured forms. It is increasingly apparent, however, that once NMs are released into the wider environment, they do not stay in their manufactured state - they change or 'transform'. Transformations can affect NM size, charge, their surface coatings and their ability to bind to other things such as soil particles or other chemicals. Transformations occur both during transfer to the environment (e.g. via sewage works) and once NMs reach the wider environment itself (rivers, sediments and soils). It is of huge importance that we understand the transformation processes and environmental fate(s) of NMs as they can affect their toxicity to humans and the environment. The aim of this project is to study these NM transformations in more detail. We want to better understand whether different types of NMs are transformed in the same or different ways. We will conduct our work with different types of NMs, including those made from silver, titanium dioxide, polystyrene (a type of plastic) and graphene (a type of carbon). We will first use laboratory methods that mimic the ways that NMs are changed during sewage treatment and in natural waters and soils to create the transformed materials that we will then study. We will test how these new and changed NMs affect a range of common aquatic and soil organisms and contrasting their toxicity in their "pristine" state with that after they have been transformed in the environment for different times. During our tests, we will measure how much of each material is taken up by the organisms into different tissues and whether this affects how they grow and reproduce. We will also measure the activity of different genes that are likely to be affected as organisms take up different NMs. We predict that each NM will be transformed in a way that changes its likelihood to cause harmful effects. Each test will be repeated using different soils and waters typically found across the UK, to determine how transformations vary under different conditions. Finally, we will build custom-made, large exposure systems ('mesocosms') designed to mimic the rivers into which sewage works discharged and soils upon which sludge is spread, and populate them with a wide range of common UK native plants, invertebrates and fish (in the waters). By following these mesocosms for several months, we can simulate what may actually be happening in real UK environments in terms of the fate and effects of our transformed NMs. We will use the results to improve models able to predict how our transformed NMs will behave and the effects they will have. Taken together, our results should help us to predict the toxicity of NMs to help assure their safety, supporting the growth of the nanotechnology industry into the future. To this latter end we will run and coordinate a UK Nano-Academics & Regulators Platform, and will also present our results through major European Union (NanoSafety Cluster) and worldwide (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Discussion) policy working groups, as well as to the public, so reaching as wide an audience as possible.

Insects are the most abundant and diverse terrestrial animals on the planet, yet few are capable of surviving in Antarctica's inhospitable climate. Genetic evidence indicates that Antarctic insects, as well as other terrestrial arthropods, have persisted throughout the repeated glaciation events of the Pleistocene and earlier. Thus, these species are ideal test cases for modeling the biogeography of terrestrial Antarctica and evolutionary responses to changing environments. The midge Belgica antarctica is perhaps the best studied Antarctic terrestrial arthropod in terms of physiology and genetics. This species is the southernmost free-living insect, and we recently participated in sequencing the genome and transcriptome of this species. However, a lack of information from closely related species has hindered our ability to pinpoint the precise evolutionary mechanisms that permit survival in Antarctica. In this proposal, we establish an international collaboration with scientists from the US, UK, France, and Chile to expand physiological and genomic research of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic midges. In addition to B. antarctica, our project focuses on Eretmoptera murphyi, a sub-Antarctic endemic that has invaded the maritime Antarctic, Halirytus magellanicus, a strictly Magellanic sub-Antarctic species endemic to Tierra del Fuego, and B. albipes, a sub-Antarctic species found on Crozet Island in the Indian Ocean. These four species are closely related and span an environmental gradient from sub-Antarctic to Antarctic habitats. Our central hypothesis is that shared mechanisms drive both population-level adaptation to local environmental conditions and macroevolutionary changes that permit a select few insects to tolerate Antarctic climates. Our Specific Aims are 1) Characterize conserved and species-specific adaptations to extreme environments through comparative physiology and transcriptomics, 2) Comparative genomics of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic midges to identify macroevolutionary signatures of Antarctic adaptation, and 3) Investigate patterns of diversification and location adaptation using population genomics. Our Broader Impacts include deploying an education professional with our research team to coordinate outreach and continuing our partnership with a Kentucky non-profit focused on K-12 STEM programming.