Self-introduction: Thomas Hitchcock

Hi, I’m Thomas Hitchcock. I grew up in the UK, studying Genetics and Systems Biology at the University of Cambridge, before moving up to the University of St Andrews to do my PhD in Evolutionary Genetics, and have now joined iTHEMS as an SPDR. I’m interested in why organisms appear the way they do, and how we can use evolutionary theory to better understand this. In practice, I’ve study two main flavours of problem, (1) when and why do organisms (and genes) come into conflict with one another, and (2) how are organisms (and genes) expected to weight different fitness trade-offs. To tackle these problems, I use a mix of population genetics and evolutionary game theory, and focus mainly on unusual genetic systems, life histories, and ecologies, which I hope might prove particularly clear tests of theory. I’m excited to discuss and learn from the wide variety of researchers at iTHEMS, and hopefully incorporate some new mathematical tools and frameworks into ecology and evolution.