Brad Duthie

Research Fellow

alexander.duthie@stir.ac.uk / @bradduthie

Autobiography: Brad completed his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Iowa State University in 2013, developing and testing theory concerning species interactions and coexistence in communities characterised by ephemerally available patches of resources. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Aberdeen developing inbreeding and mate choice theory before joining ConFooBio in the fall of 2016.

Research interests: Brad takes an integrative approach to addressing biological questions through the development of theory, empirical hypothesis testing, and mathematical and computational modelling. As part of the ConFooBio project, he is developing software to construct general social-ecological models that integrate game theory and ecological theory to resolve conflicts between biodiversity conservation and food security. These models build off of a previously developed management strategy evaluation (MSE) framework to simulate all aspects of management: population dynamics, manager observation of populations, manager decision making, and stakeholder responses to management decisions. The newly developed game-theoretic management strategy evaluation (GMSE) framework applies machine learning techniques to mimic the decision-making process of managers and stakeholders under conditions of change, uncertainty, and conflict. The GMSE software will be released as publicly available R package with associated GUI, and will have applications across a broad range of social-ecological systems that include populations of conservation interest.

Brad is currently an independent Early Career Research Fellow funded by the Leverhulme Trust (https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk).

Publications

Duthie, A. B., Lee, A. M., & Reid, J. M. (2016). Inbreeding parents should invest more resources in fewer offspring. Proceedings of The Royal Society B, 20161845. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.184

Duthie, A. B., Bocedi, G., & Reid, J. M. (2016). When does female multiple mating evolve to adjust inbreeding? Effects of inbreeding depression, direct costs, mating constraints, and polyandry as a threshold trait. Evolution, 70(9), 1927–1943. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.13005

Duthie, A. B., Abbott, K. C., & Nason, J. D. (2015). Trade-offs and coexistence in fluctuating environments: evidence for a key dispersal-fecundity trade-off in five nonpollinating fig wasps. American Naturalist, 186(1), 151–158. https://doi.org/10.1086/681621

Duthie, A. B., Abbott, K. C., & Nason, J. D. (2014). Trade-offs and coexistence: A lottery model applied to fig wasp communities. American Naturalist, 183(6), 826–841. https://doi.org/10.1086/675897

Links http://bradduthie.github.io (Website), bradduthie (GitHub)