Social evolution and social engineering in bacterial infection

Ashleigh Griffin is Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Department of Biology here in Oxford. She started her research career with sa PhD project on social behavior in meerkats and now studies the behavior of bacterial cells infecting the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis – the common thread is an interest in the ways in which evolution shapes social behaviors. In her talk, she will provide an overview of the insights gained from over ten years of research on how we can use social evolution theory to understand long-term patterns of behavior in lung infections, with a focus on iron metabolism and antibiotic resistance.