The main focus of my research has been on interactions between insect herbivores and plants, concentrating on factors that limit and inhibit herbivory by insects. The complex nature of these interactions is reflected by the breadth of projects and the scales at which they are undertaken, ranging from studies on the autecology of prominent insect herbivores, through to work examining the distribution of insect herbivores and associated fauna across coarsely defined habitat types.

Specific projects have considered problems pertaining to host plant traits influencing the success of insect herbivores, requiring the integration of nutritional ecology, behavioural ecology, morphometrics, ecological implications of insect size, evolutionary ecology and functional morphology. The emphasis has been on how digestive strategy can constrain insect herbivores and increase their susceptibility to certain groups of plant defences. This has been a springboard for experimental work under controlled laboratory conditions that has been coupled with field studies and detailed examinations of morphology. This has produced a compelling body of evidence suggesting that conventional explanations of insect-plant interactions are insufficient to adequately explain the observations in the field.

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