Publications: full list with pdfs and explanatory notes


Books:

Mayhew PJ. 2006. Discovering evolutionary ecology: Bringing together ecology and evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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I see this as my most important contribution. It captures my view of the field as a whole and shows how it knits together - something that can't be found anywhere else, and I believe that very few researchers appreciate. Aims to rectify what disappoints me about other evolutionary ecology books. I tried to make it short and fun to read too. Cheap, quick and informative; what have you got to lose?



Papers from present to past:

34. Traynor RE & Mayhew PJ. 2005. Host range in solitary versus gregarious parasitoids: a laboratory experiment. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata 117: 41-49. pdf

Sometimes life isn't as exciting as you'd hope. However uninspiring, this paper does contain an important message about this question, and some surprises too.



33. Böhm M & Mayhew PJ. 2005. Historical biogeography and the evolution of the latittudinal gradient in species richness in the Papionini (Primata: Cercopithecidae). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society85: 235-246.  pdf

Ever got frustrated trying to explain the latitudinal gradient in species richness? Me too! This cuts a swathe through the undergrowth. Originally submitted to Journal of Animal Ecology, they spent two years deciding, first that it wasn't ecology, and second that it wasn't novel. Amusingly, TREE published an article with the same idea (but no data) the same year. NERC decided that they didn't want to fund this, and given our experience above they were probably correct. So Monika ended up with it as a masters project: good for her!



32. Guinnee MA, Bernal JS, Bezemer TM, Fidgen JG, Hardy ICW, Mayhew PJ, Mills NJ & West SA. 2005. Testing predictions of small brood models using parasitoid wasps. Evolutionary Ecology Research 7: 779-794. pdf

Meghan wanted my Laelius and Aphaereta data and I happily obliged. Her baby really, but it was nice to re-visit these questions. See my earlier more-pioneering version below (10).



31. Pexton JJ & Mayhew PJ. 2005. Clutch size adjustment, information use and the evolution of gregarious development in parasitoid wasps. Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology58: 99-110. pdf

One of my favourite papers: supports a nice theory perfectly, and has some cool new twists too. Highly recommended.



30. Traynor RE & Mayhew PJ. 2005. A comparative study of body size and clutch size across the parasitoid Hymenoptera. Oikos 109: 305-316. pdf

Squeezing yet more blood out of a stone, you say! If only I'd had my hands on these data first, I could have saved them and parasitoids a bad image.



29. Pexton JJ & Mayhew PJ. 2004. Competitive interactions between parasitoid larvae and the evolution of gregarious development. Oecologia141: 179-190. pdf

Do you believe this paper? I thought it left unanswered questions but it sailed in without a hitch!



28. Mayhew PJ. 2003. A tale of two analyses: estimating the consequences of shifts in hexapod diversification.Biological Journal of the Linnean Society80: 23-36. pdf

I had mixed feelings about this as I did it. It replaces anecdote with analysis, contains important and novel messages about macroevolution, and I think the conclusions are correct. However I always had the feeling that there were better ways of approaching the question, if only I was better at maths and programming. Got my best ever set of referees comments but has been completely ignored by everyone since.



27. Pexton JJ, Rankin DJ, Dytham C & Mayhew PJ 2003. Asymmetric larval mobility and the evolutionary transition from siblicide to nonsiblicidal behaviour in parasitoid wasps.Behavioral Ecology14: 182-193. pdf

John and Dan's baby really, though I put them on the right track. A bit long and wordy, and contains some impressively off-putting algebra.



26. Schmitz S, Schankin CJ, Prinz H, Curwen RS, Ashton PD, Caves LSD, Fink RHA, Sparrow JC, Mayhew PJ, Veigel C 2003. Molecular evolutionary convergence of the flight muscle protein arthrin in diptera and hemiptera. Molecular Biology and Evolution20: 2019-2033. pdf

"Join the crowd", they said! "Sure", I said! All I had to do was identify loads of insects, do a parsimony analysis, and cut the text by 50%. Nice to be useful. So multi-disciplinary that none of the authors actually understand the whole paper!



25. Johnson SN, Mayhew PJ, Douglas AE & Hartley SE. 2002. Insects as leaf engineers: can leaf-miners alter leaf structure for birch aphids? Functional Ecology16: 575-584. pdf

I am on this paper courtesy of Scott's charity. I guess it's some repayment for all those trips to Banchory.



24. Mayhew PJ. 2002. Shifts in hexapod diversification and what Haldane could have said.Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B269: 969-974. pdf
Commentry in TREE here.

I was very excited about this as I did it, and I think the results are reasonably robust. However, better analytical techniques are possible: one simple improvement was made by Davis et al. (the angiosperm supertree paper). The findings made page 2 of the Yorkshire Evening Press, under a big picture of a lingerie model, capturing perfectly the excitement of the day.



23. Mayhew PJ & Pen I. 2002. Comparative analysis of sex ratios. Chapter 6 (pp. 132-156) in I.C.W. Hardy (ed.) Sex ratios: concepts and research methods. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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This review took b****y ages, but I was grateful to be able to spout forth about comparative methods, seeing as I had by then got quite a bit of experience with them. Amazing how quickly this went out of date (not entirely - it's still mostly current).



22. Pexton JJ & Mayhew PJ. 2002. Siblicide and life history evolution in parasitoids. Behavioral Ecology13: 690-695. pdf

Yes, nice work, and it has done quite well. Worth knowing about.



21. Mayhew PJ. 2001. Herbivore host choice and optimal bad motherhood. Trends in Ecology and Evolution16: 165-167. pdf

When the Scheirs et al. paper landed on my desk to referee, I thought it was a nice twist on a subject that was quite close to my heart. TREE thought so too.



20. Mayhew PJ & Glaizot O. 2001. Integrating theory of clutch size and body size evolution for parasitoids.Oikos92: 372-376. pdf

Oikos eventually gave in and published this, though I made the mistake of not including an abstract. It was my attempt to say that "body size matters as much as clutch size, so let's focus on that", but has been so ignored that when Cohen et al. re-awakened the issue in PNAS in 2005, they didn't even make the connection with this paper.



19. Pexton JJ & Mayhew PJ. 2001. Immobility: the key to family harmony? Trends in Ecology and Evolution16: 7-9 pdf

Once again, the Boivin & van Baaren paper landed on my desk to referee, and I thought it was worth a note in TREE. However, everyone else has obviously decided that it's not of general relevance.



18. Mayhew PJ, Heitmans WRB. 2000. Life history correlates and reproductive biology of Laelius pedatus (Hymenoptera : Bethylidae) in The Netherlands. European Journal of Entomology97: 313-322.

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Aimless data collection makes for aimless papers. There are a few nice findings though: a suggestion that egg size affects offspring fitness, and unmated females take longer to lay, and sex ratio increasing with mother's age (probably an indication of sperm depletion). This might explain the mysteries of paper 4 (below).



17. Hardy ICW and Mayhew PJ. 1999. Reply from I.C.W. Hardy and P.J. Mayhew. Trends in Ecology and Evolution14: 235. pdf

Ian wrote this and I was happy to agree with him.



16. Mayhew PJ & van Alphen JJM. 1999. Gregarious development in alysiine parasitoids evolved through a reduction in larval aggression. Animal Behaviour58: 131-141. pdf

Close to my favourite piece of work: I am still really proud of this, and it was the beginning of a long affair with Aphaereta.



15. Mayhew PJ & Blackburn TM. 1999. Does development mode organize life history evolution in the parasitoid Hymenoptera? Journal of Animal Ecology68: 906-916. pdf

Also quite proud of this one. Everyone thought that these data were good-for-nothing. But they were just waiting for the right questions to be asked. Cool.



14. Seehausen O, Mayhew PJ, Van Alphen JJM. 1999. Evolution of colour patterns in East African cichlid fish. Journal of Evolutionary Biology12: 514-534. pdf

Having conquered Phylogenetic Regression, if that's possible for anyone other than Alan Grafen, Ole wanted help with fish. Annoyingly, this is my most highly cited primary research paper, which says a lot about how impact is affected by colour, size, sex and notochords, but also a lot about how good Ole is.



13. Hardy ICW & Mayhew PJ. 1998. Sex ratio, sexual dimorphism and mating structure in bethylid wasps.Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology42: 383-395. pdf

This paper has done fairly well, and the ideas behind it were good. Ian's baby really, but I think we made a good team and it was immensely enjoyable. There are some open issues though: what, for example, does relative male thorax volume really signify? Does a cross-species trend mean anything without contrast support? The latter issue made its way into 23 (above).



12. Hardy ICW & Mayhew PJ. 1998. Partial local mating and the sex ratio: indirect comparative evidence.Trends in Ecology and Evolution13: 431-432. pdf

Ian's idea, and I was happy to agree. This note subsequently transmuted into part of the book chapter above too (23).



11. Mayhew PJ. 1998. The evolution of gregariousness in parasitoid wasps. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B265: 383-389. pdf

This resulted from my discovery of MacClade. These days, referees would expect greater exploration of the parsimony assumptions, but in those days nobody thought about those issues much - the defaults were a God-given truth! My feeling is that the conclusions would stand up to a fuller analysis, but I doubt if anyone can be bothered.



10. Mayhew PJ. 1998. Offspring size-number strategy in the bethylid parasitoid Laelius pedatus.Behavioral Ecology9: 54-59.

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Sitting in Stamford University library in July 1995, killing time, I came across Charnov & Downhower's version of Ebert's model. I thought "that'll be testable on Laelius then". And it was. If I were doing it again, I would make a slight adjustment to the bootstrap analysis, but I think the approach I used then is, if anything, conservative. Subsequent re-analysis (32) confirms the original conclusions.



9. Mayhew PJ. 1998. The life-histories of parasitoid wasps developing in small gregarious broods. Netherlands Journal of Zoology 48: 225-240.

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One of my original aims when I went to Leiden was do to a massive comparative analysis of traits associated with small gregarious broods. However the associated traits were so diverse, and the data on relatives of these species so difficult to come by, that this mighty project collapsed into a descriptive rant. The main message is a serious one though, and I think still holds.



8. Mayhew PJ. 1998. Daily activity rhythms in adult odonata examined with a dynamic programming model.Netherlands Journal of Zoology48: 101-119. pdf

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When I started my PhD what I really wanted to do with my life was collect obscure facts about dragonflies (reality kicked in shortly afterwards). This was the result, and it originated with discussions with Alex Kacelnik when I was doing my undergraduate project. I spent b****y ages teaching myself both Pascal and dynamic programming, and all I ended up doing was re-creating McNamara et al.'s results. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.



7. Mayhew PJ. 1998. Testing the preference-performance hypothesis in phytophagous insects: Lessons from chrysanthemum leafminer (Diptera : Agromyzidae)
Environmental Entomology27: 45-52.

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Another candidate for the award for "most time spent for least reward". I now use this as an example of how not to write a scientific paper.



6. Mayhew PJ & Hardy ICW. 1998. Nonsiblicidal behavior and the evolution of clutch size in bethylid wasps. American Naturalist 151:409-424. pdf

Collecting all that data for paper 9 (above), I noticed that many of them were bethylids, and that therefore there might be something special about that group. So I delved further. I spent a very happy few months in Leiden Natural History Museum Library compiling the data from some very obscure papers, and then an equally happy two weeks with Ian in Aarhus analyzing it. The page charges Am. Nat. insisted on still grate though.



5. Mayhew PJ, Ode PJ, Hardy ICW & Rosenheim JA. 1998. Parasitoid clutch size and irreversible evolution.Ecology Letters1: 139-141. pdf

Ecology Letters had just started up and was desperate to fill its pages. We were happy to oblige.



4. Mayhew PJ & Godfray HCJ. 1997. Mixed sex allocation strategies in a parasitoid wasp.Oecologia110: 218-221.pdf

My favourite experimental study so far. It was a real shot in the dark, but paid off, and I still marvel at an animal that can do this.



3. Mayhew PJ. 1997. Adaptive patterns of host-plant selection by phytophagous insects. Oikos79: 417-428.

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Soon after starting my PhD, Charles introduced me to a leaf-miner system, intending that I work on its parasitoids. I found the miner just as exciting (hence paper 7 above), and it opened an ever-expanding world that I wanted to share. This is the result. My most highly cited paper; something that I guessed would happen before I wrote it.



2. Mayhew PJ. 1997. Fitness consequences of ovicide in a parasitoid wasp. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata84: 115-126. pdf

Working on Laelius for paper 4, above, I soon noticed that they liked killing their own eggs if you didn't remove them from their clutch. This got me thinking about ovicide, and the result was this paper. This involved some of the most labour-intensive experiments I have ever done, and got me into trouble for missing several lab. meetings. I was also embarrassed to find out late in the day that I had completely mistaken which end of the eggs the wasp larvae hatch from!



1. Mayhew PJ. 1994. Food intake and adult feeding behaviour in Calopteryx splendens (Harris) andErythromma najas (Hansemann) (Zygoptera: Calopterygidae, Coenagrionidae).Odonatologica23: 115-124.

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My undergraduate project, and published before I really understood ANOVA, so take the F ratios with a pinch of salt! The conclusions are probably correct though. The journal sent this to be refereed by my project supervisor, Peter Miller, who funnily recommended acceptance.



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