July 30, 2026 | Dr. Kalyani Twyman has joined Prof. Dr. Hanna Kokko’s lab group in the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) with a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdocs. Previously, she completed a PhD at the University of St Andrews in Scotland exploring social adaptation in the major transitions in evolution. These are defined as transitions where the way that genetic information is transmitted between generations changes so that entities that were previously capable of independent replication can now only replicate as a part of a larger integrated whole. Her PhD focused on three of these: the evolution of genomes, the evolution of multicellularity, and the evolution of obligate eusociality.

In Mainz, she will continue using social evolution theory and various mathematical modelling techniques, but focused around the evolution of complexity within eusocial systems. She will investigate the causes and consequences of dispersal- and reproduction-related polymorphisms in eusocial taxa, with a primary focus on wing dimorphism in social insects.

Formal theory for eusocial systems remains underdeveloped, in part because the modelling of the complex structure of colonies poses substantial mathematical challenges. This project seeks to contribute to a growing body of work that applies formal mathematical approaches to eusocial systems and in doing so, aims to provide conceptual and analytical tools that facilitate future theoretical and empirical research on the evolution of complexity — i.e., these dispersal- and reproduction-related polymorphisms as well as other forms of complexity like caste structure — in these eusocial taxa.