Mark Elgar -

I completed my BSc (Hons) in the School of Australian Environmental Studies, Griffith University. After a couple of years as a research assistant, I enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Nick Davies. My thesis research examined the costs and benefits of group foraging in house sparrows, which involved field experiments on the roof of the Zoology building. I obtained an SERC Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on comparative studies at the University of Oxford with Paul Harvey. During this time, I initiated research into the evolution of mating behaviour in invertebrates, and pursued this interest while holding a University Fellowship and then a QEII Fellowship at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. I joined the Department of Zoology at Melbourne in 1991 and was promoted to my current position in 2005. Currently, I am Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioral Ecology, Associate Editor of the journals Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology and Research Letters in Ecology, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Ethology. I am a former member of the University Council.

My research takes an experimental and comparative approach to investigating the evolutionary significance of social and mating behaviour, mostly in terrestrial invertebrates. Specific areas of interest include the evolutionary outcomes of sexual conflict, especially in sexually cannibalistic species; cryptic female choice and sperm competition; chemical communication; and the evolution of receptor organ diversity.

Clare D'Alberto; Rebecca Featherston; Sarah Garnick; Thanh-Lan Gluckman; Lisa Hodgkin; Tamara Johnson; Clare Kinnear; Leonor Ceballos Meraz; Eunice Tan

Jessica Henneken; Haley Lambert; Jennifer Hui Hwa Loh; Jessica Porter; Nicole Quittner

Coordinator
Evolution and the Human Condition
Animal Behaviour
Experimental Animal Behaviour
Research Project

Contributor
Biology of Cells and Organisms

Chair, Melbourne Custom Programs Committee, University of Melbourne
Member, Workload Advisory Committee, University of Melbourne
Member, Research Higher Degree Committee, University of Melbourne
Member, Confirmation and Promotions Committee, Faculty of Science
Member, Academic Programs Committee, Department of Zoology

Arnqvist G, Jones TM, Elgar MA (2003) Sex-role reversed nuptial feeding in Zeus bugs. Nature 424: 387

Christensen KL, Gallacher AP, Martin L. Tong T, Elgar MA (2010) Nutrient compensatory foraging in a free-living social insect. Naturwissenschaften 97: 941—944

Davie LC, Jones TM, Elgar MA (2010) The role of chemical communication in sexual selection: hair-pencil displays in the diamondback moth, Plutella zylostella. Animal Behaviour 79: 391—399

Elgar MA, Schneider JM, Herberstein ME (2000) Females control paternity in a sexually cannibalistic spider. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London 267: 2439–2443

Fromhage L, Elgar MA, Schneider JM (2005) Faithful without care: the evolution of monogyny. Evolution 59: 1400–1405

Jones TM. Elgar MA (2008) Patterns of insemination and paternity success in the golden orb-weaving spider Nephila edulis. Behavioral Ecology 19: 285–291

McNamara KB, Elgar MA, Brown R, Jones TM (2008) Paternity costs from polyandry compensated by increased fecundity in the hide beetle. Behavioral Ecology 19: 433–440

Symonds MRE, Elgar MA (2008) The evolution of pheromone diversity. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23: 220–228

van Wilgenburg E, Symonds MRE, Elgar MA (2011) Evolution of cuticular hydrocarbon diversity in ants. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 24: 1188–1198

van Wilgenburg E, Dang S, Forti A-L, Koumoundouros T J, Ly A, Elgar MA (2007) An absence of aggression between non-nestmates in the bull ant Myrmecia nigriceps. Naturwissenchaften 94: 787–790

Walter A, Elgar MA, Bliss P, Moritz RFA (2008) ‘Wrap attack’ activates web decorating behavior in Argiope spiders. Behavioral Ecology 19: 799–804