Kit Maskrey

PhD Student

I completed my MSc in Evolutionary & Behavioural Ecology at the University of Exeter, where I had also completed my BSc a year previously, in 2016. During my MSc I became particularly interested in the mechanisms through which consistent behavioural differences between individuals of the same species could be maintained and completed my research project on the topic using the rockpool prawn Palaemon elegans. This work has since been published (Maskrey et al., 2018).

My current research looks to bring together behavioural and molecular techniques to provide a more complete picture of how behavioural variation comes about and how different behavioural types might react to changes in their environment, using the beadlet anemone Actinia equina. I am currently carrying out two studies addressing this:

The first looks at how anemones react both behaviourally and physiologically to temperature change over a longer timescale. Anemones of three distinct morphotypes, which differ genetically and behaviourally, are behaviourally tested at a control temperature before the temperature is increased gradually over a period of two and a half weeks, with repeated behavioural tests at each temperature. At the end of that time, at the highest temperature, samples are taken for proteomic analysis.
The second is aimed at better understanding anemones’ molecular response to temperature stress by running RNA analyses. Anemones of different behavioural types are exposed to an extreme temperature stressor and samples are taken for transcriptome analysis

Daniel K. Maskrey, Stephen J. White, Alastair J. Wilson, Thomas M. Houslay (2018) Who dares does not always win: risk-averse rockpool prawns are better at controlling a limited food resource. Animal Behaviour 140: 187-197.