The evolution of parental care: Genomic and ecological perspectives on mouthbrooding and viviparity

Parental care is widespread across the animal kingdom and often involves highly complex and sophisticated behavioural, morphological and physiological adaptations. Many of these strategies have evolved independently a great number of times across the Tree of Life in a process known as convergent evolution, the most striking examples of which include viviparity and mouthbrooding. Viviparous species incubate embryos within reproductive organs, while mouthbrooders incubate eggs within their mouth. Accordingly, the overarching aim of my thesis was to investigate the evolution of viviparity and mouthbrooding using a combination of computational and experimental methods.