Centre for Behaviour and Evolution

Staff Profile

Dr Isabel Smallegange

Senior Lecturer in Population Biology

Background

Background

Isabel Smallegange is a Senior Lecturer in Population Biology at the University of Newcastle, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. She is also Group Lead of the Modelling, Evidence and Policy group, Director of Culture & Inclusion for the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, and Co-Lead of the Behaviour Newcastle University Centre of Research Excellence.

Isabel’s research interests comprise a range of topics that include eco-evolutionary dynamics, life history theory, developmental plasticity and evolutionary demography. Her research aims at mechanistically linking ecology, evolution and development to explain why animals express which phenotypes under what conditions, and how this impacts population responses to environmental change, harvesting or fishing. Isabel develops demographic models that capture these responses and tests these in experiments or against field data from terrestrial and marine coldblooded animals (bulb mites, manta rays, reef sharks, skates). Isabel blogs about her research and other aspects of life in academia.

Recent publications (see also Publication List)

Stewart KAS, Smallegange IM*. 2025. Developmental plasticity and the evolutionary rescue of a colonising mite. Evolution & Development

Smallegange IM, Guenther A. 2024. A development-centric perspective on pace-of-life syndromes. Evolution Letters, qrae069.

Smallegange IM, Lucas S. 2024. DEBBIES Dataset to study Life Histories across Ectotherms. Scientific Data 11: 153.

See the Press Release and the blog post at Springer Nature Research Communities and at the From Newcastle University blog

Rademaker M, van Leeuwen A, Smallegange IM. online. Why we cannot always expect life history strategies to directly inform on sensitivity to environmental change. Journal of Animal Ecology http://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.14050

See the blog post at Animal Ecology in Focus, and the Research Highlight in Journal of Animal Ecology by Touzot & Paniw (2024).

My full CV with Publication List can be found here. My full list of publications can also be found on Google Scholar.

Qualifications

2022                Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (UK)

2014                University Teaching Qualification for Lecturers (BKO)

5 Sep 2007     PhD, ‘Interference competition and patch choice in foraging shore crabs’; Netherlands Inst. for Sea Research & University of Amsterdam

2000                BSc, MSc Population Biology, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Professional history

2022 – present     Senior Lecturer, SNES, Newcastle University, UK

2024 – present     Co-Lead Behaviour Newcastle University Centre of Research Excellence

2024 – present     Director of ED&I, SNES, Newcastle University, UK

2023 – present     Group Lead, Modelling, Evidence and Policy group, Newcastle University, UK

2022 – 2024     Co-Director Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, Newcastle University, UK

2018 – 2022       Associate Professor, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam

2013 – 2018          MacGillavry Fellowship, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam

2012 – 2013          Research Fellow at University of Oxford (Dept. of Zoology)

2010 – 2012          Research Fellow at Imperial College London (Silwood Park)

2008 – 2010         Rubicon Fellowship (NWO)– held at Imperial College London

2007 – 2008         A. v Humboldt Fellowship – Max Planck Inst. for Ornithology

2005                      Marie Curie Research Trainee Fellowship – University of Exeter

Maternity leave    Dec 2012 – June 2013

Evidence of international reputation for research

- 2.8M£ (personal) grant money awarded

- >30 invited talks since obtaining my PhD in 2007

- Associate Editor (4 journals; 1 Peer Community): Functional Ecology (since 2018), Oikos (since 2013), Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata (since 2019), Journal of Animal Ecology (2011-2014); Recommender for PCI Ecology (since 2019)

- Grant reviewer for Austrian Science Fund, Earthwatch, ERC H2020, NERC, ESF-FWO, Norway Research Council, NSF, NWO, Swiss National Science Foundation, The Royal Society

- Manuscript reviewer for >40 journals, including Nature, Nature Ecol & Evol, Scientific Reports

- Invited member of the European Science Foundation College of Expert Reviewers

Research

Research interests

Research conducted within the team ties three research themes:

Eco-evolutionary dynamics, functional trait demography, and developmental plasticity

Climate variability is increasing. How will this affect different animal species? We are in great need of an integrative framework that allows ecologists to predict how animals respond to change depending on their life history strategies (i.e. the different ways in which individuals trade-off resource investment into survival or reproduction). The DEB-IPM project (see Teaching Tab on my Newcastle University website) is such a framework, in which we link the characteristics of coldblooded animals to their population response to environmental change.

The DEB-IPM project uses the DEBBIES dataset, which can download here along with the accompanying paper by Smallegange & Lucas (2024). For those interested, I’ve recorded a couple of videos explaining  what a DEB-IPM is and how you can apply DEB-IPMs to answer life history and conservation questions. 

Including eco-evolutionary dynamics in this framework is essential to understand how evolutionary changes (like shifts in genotype and phenotype frequencies) and ecological changes (like population size and growth) influence each other. Historically, ecologists and evolutionary biologists overlooked each other’s processes due to differing time scales. However, recent perspectives highlight the interplay between these variables. Our research focuses on predicting eco-evolutionary population responses to environmental changes through long-term experiments with bulb mites and demographic models for estuarine and coastal marine species. Particularly in human-dominated coastal areas, we aim to understand how human activities affect life history traits and population dynamics. For more details, see our contribution to the special issue on “Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics of Marine Biodiversity in Human-Dominated Coastalscapes“, to which the team contributed.

Finally, the eco-evolutionary process can be significantly influenced by developmental plasticity. Developmental plasticity, whereby a specific input during an individual’s development produces a lasting alteration in phenotype, has been well-documented in human and non-human animals. It is studied by both evolutionary biologists and researchers studying human health. Importantly, developmental plasticity can alter the direction of evolutionary change. An example of this can be found in this paper (Deere & Smallegange 2023) to the extent that phenotypic variation derived from development becomes encoded in the genome. How to integrate developmental plasticity into eco-evolutionary population dynamics I explain in my 2022 paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. A more recent paper in Evolution Letters (2024) argues how a development-centric perspective explains the pace-of-life syndromes of animals and how they relate to responses to environmental change.

Other projects the team is involved in

DISCAR: The DISCAR (DIS = disturbance, CAR = carnivores) project aims at providing an operational framework with analytical tools for assessing the impacts of human pressures on populations of small carnivores, and showcasing it with case studies in applied conservation. DISCAR will use small carnivores in French mainland and overseas territories as a case study to assess the population consequences or impacts of human pressures on animal populations.

Reimagining Leadership Project: Isabel is a member of the Participatory Action Research group, committed to making a positive impact within Newcastle University and in turn, voicing what we learn more widely to advocate for sector wide change.

Prospective students

Please check out the teaching tab for student projects on life history strategies and population responses to environmental change using the DEBBIES dataset, which is described in this paper. On the teaching tab, there is also a list of previous under- and postgraduate research projects.

Postdoc opportunities

I’m very happy to support applications for research fellowships, for example Royal Society Newton International Fellowships, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellowships, Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellowships, FCT Post-doctoral Fellowships, etc. I’ve had success in obtaining research fellowships for myself throughout my career so do get in touch if you are interested in bringing a fellowship into my research group.

Current team members or affiliations

- Simone Tava (University of Milano graduate; volunteer researcher): The role of energy acquisition and allocation in shaping life history strategies in marine megafauna

- Victoria Dixon (Newcastle University; MRes; I am the main supervisor): Can morphology be a useful predictor of life history strategies in fish?

- Lukas Edwards (Newcastle University; PhD; I am the main supervisor): The eco-evolutionary dynamics of how life histories structure population responses to change through evolving developmental systems.

- Melissa Versteeg (Newcastle University; PhD with Theresa Rueger; I am co-supervisor): Understanding the long-term effects of abiotic and biotic stressors on the social dynamics and reproduction of anemonefishes.

- Chi-Yen Hsieh (Newcastle University; PhD with Gary Caldwell; I am co-supervisor): Investigating the effects of malachite green and its metabolites on the microbiome of a marine polychaete worm, Hediste diversicolor.

Completed PhDs

- Sol Lucas (2025, Newcastle University) (with Per Berggren; I was co-supervisor): Assessing the population dynamics and conservation of sharks in the UK.

- Mark Rademaker (2024, NIOZ, Netherlands) (with Anieke van Leeuwen; I was co-supervisor): From pattern to process in modelling the spatiotemporal dynamics of marine communities

- Marjolein Toorians (2024, UBC, Canada) (with Jonathan Davies; I was co-supervisor): The effect of biodiversity on disease transmission and reservoir-dynamics

- Kim Eustache (2023, University of Perpignan / University of Amsterdam) (with Serge Planes; I was co-supervisor): Unravelling the genetic and environmental influences on blacktip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) reproductive success

- Naomi Zweerus (2022, University of Amsterdam) (with Astrid Groot; I was co-supervisor): Sexual communication in moths

- Flor Rhebergen (2022, University of Amsterdam): The ecology of adaptive condition-dependent polyphenism

- Tom van den Beuken (2019, University of Amsterdam): How male dimorphisms can be maintained in single populations - a minor's guide to reproduction

- Jacques Deere (2015, Oxford University): Alternative reproductive phenotypes and the role of dispersal in population dynamics; using Rhizoglyphus robini as a model species

Former postdocs

Kathryn Stewart (2017 - 2021) - now Assistant Professor at Leiden University

Jacques Deere (2015 - 2018) - now postdoc at the University of Amsterdam

Teaching

Modules taught and teaching roles at Newcastle University

NES2305 Biodiversity, Ecology and Conservation

NES2309 Evolutionary Biology (module leader)

Senior Tutor Biology/Zoology

Biology-Psychology Joint Honours Liaison


Under- and postgraduate student projects using DEBBIES; a database to compare life history strategies across ectotherms

How can we predict how populations respond to the ever greater changes in their environment? Within this project, we want to know which characteristics of organisms relate to population responses to environmental change. One way to find out is to analyse life history patterns using demographic models. However, depending on whether you model individual life histories from phenomenological descriptions (Salguero-Gomez et al. 2016; Paniw et al. 2018; Capdevila et al 2020) or from mechanistic descriptions using energy budget models (Smallegange et al. in 2020; Smallegange & Berg 2019), different predictions are obtained.

With DEBBIES (Smallegange & Lucas 2024), we aim to to (i) unravel if energy budget descriptions of individual life histories consistently return different predictions on population responses to environmental change compared to when individual life histories are represented by statistical functions, (ii) understand why that is the case, and (iii) identify the most accurate way to predict population responses to novel environmental change. To this end, I support Bachelor, Master and PhD student projects in which students answer their own research questions, while at the same time expanding the DEBBIES database to ultimately conduct large, cross-taxonomical life history analyses.

The DEBBIES dataset can be downloaded here. For those interested, I've recorded a couple of videos explaining what demographic models (DEB-IPMs) can use the DEBBIES dataset and how you can apply such models to answer life history and conservation questions.

Do you want to be involved?

If you are a quantitatively driven mind with interests in life history theory, demography, eco­-evolutionary dynamics, or related topics, please contact me to discuss potential graduate or postdoc opportunities in my group.

Students: Below is a list of current and past student projects conducted within the DEB-IPM project. Contact me to discuss research questions you would like to tackle.

Postdoctoral researchers: If you have got a project in mind that you would like to develop in my group, please contact me with a brief project proposal, CV and list of funding themes that you are considering for this project ( e.g. Marie Curie).

Completed DEBBIES student projects

  • Burkeleigh Boyd: Assessing the Resilience of Marine Ectotherms to Climate Change - Insights from Life History Traits (2024).
  • Charlotte Rowland: Modelling evolutionary rescue in marine populations: Can life history speed save populations? (2023).
  • Gemma Crawford: There's no time to waste, the fast are winning the race! Comparison in life history speed and IUCN red list for species survival using dynamic energy bdguet integral projection models (DEB-IPM (2023).
  • Jasmijn Hoevers: Demographic analysis to protect declining marine megafaunal populations against environmental changes (2021).
  • Josje Romeijn: A dynamic budget approach to identify a fast-slow life history continuum in microorganisms (2021).
  • Iris van Rijn: Analyzing life history patterns using the Dynamic Energy Budget Integral Projection Model (DEB-IPM) (2021).
  • Dora Vig (MSc student at Utrecht University): Comparison of population-level life-history patterns of invasive marine species, using dynamic energy budget integral projection models, (2021).
  • Sophie Timmerman: On the paradox in dynamic energy budget population models (2019).
  • Gavin Jansen: Predicting changes in population dynamics using stochastic demographic models (2018).
  • Tom Hopman: An analysis of life-history patterns in the fast-slow continuum using dynamic energy budget theory (2018).
  • Naomi Eeltink: Predicting life history patterns across the fast-slow continuum: A cross-level test using the Dynamic Energy Budget-Integral Projection Model (DEB-IPM) (2017).
  • Marjolein Toorians: her BSc project is part of the paper Smallegange et al. (2017) (see below).

Scientific papers resulting from DEBBIES

Popular science on DEBBIES

References

Capdevila, P., Beger, M., Blomberg, S. P., Hereu, B., Linares, C., and Salguero-Gómez, R. (2020). Longevity, body dimension and reproductive mode drive differences in aquatic versus terrestrial life history strategies. Funct. Ecol. 34, 1613–1625. doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.13604

Paniw, M., Ozgul, A., and Salguero-Gómez, R. (2018). Interactive life-history traits predict sensitivity of plants and animals to temporal autocorrelation. Ecol. Lett. 21, 275–286. doi: 10.1111/ele.12892

de Roos AM, Persson L. (2013) Population and Community Ecology of Ontogenetic Development (Monographs in Population Biology, 51). Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA.

Salguero-Gomez R, Jones OR, Jongejans E, Blomberg SP, Hodgson DJ, Mbeau-Ache C. et al. (2016). Fast-slow continuum and reproductive strategies structure plant life-history variation worldwide. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 113: 230-235.

Smallegange IM, Coulson T (2013). Towards a general, population-level understanding of eco-evolutionary change. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 28: 143-148.

Smallegange IM, Lucas S. 2023. DEBBIES to compare life history strategies across ectotherms. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.22.554265

Smallegange, I. M., Caswell, H., Toorians, M. E. M., and de Roos, A. M. (2017). Mechanistic description of population dynamics using dynamic energy budget theory incorporated into integral projection models. Methods Ecol. Evol. 8, 146–154. doi: 10.1111/2041-210x.12675

Publications