Assoc. Prof. Martin Burd

Associate Professor
Evolutionary Ecology

Office: G17 Biology Building
Telephone: +61-3-9905-5667
Fax: +61-3-9905-5613
E-mail: Martin.Burd@monash.edu

School of Biological Sciences
Monash University
VIC 3800, Australia

• Evolutionary ecology of flowering plant reproduction:
  Sex allocation, ovule number evolution
  Pollination biology
  Plant life history evolution
• Behaviour and social organisation in ant colonies:
  Foraging ecology of leaf-cutting ants
  Traffic and collective movement by ants
  Ants as models of crowd behaviour and crowd panics

Honours projects for prospective students

• Bateman's principle fails to explain reproductive patterns in plants:
  Burd, M. 1994. Bateman's principle and plant reproduction: the role of pollen limitation in fruit and seed set. Botanical Review 60: 83-139.
• The first application of traffic engineering theories to the traffic of ant trails:
  Burd, M., D. Archer, N. Aranwela and D. J. Stradling. 2002. Traffic dynamics of the leaf-cutting ant Atta cephalotes. American Naturalist 159: 283-293.
• The famous "spandrels" argument of Gould and Lewontin applied to social insect behaviours:
  Burd, M., and J. J. Howard. 2008. Optimality in a partitioned task performed by social insects. Biology Letters 4: 627-629.
• The evolution of ovule number per flower in angiosperms, a plant analogue of clutch size:
  Burd, M., T.-L. Ashman, D. R. Campbell, M. R. Dudash, M. O. Johnston, T. M. Knight, S. J. Mazer, R. J. Mitchell, J. A. Steets, and J. C. Vamosi. 2009. Ovule number per flower in a world of unpredictable pollination. American Journal of Botany 96: 1159-1167.

• Burd, M., A. Martínez Bauer, and M. R. Shrestha. 2012. The evolutionary ecology of pollination and the functional biology of agricultural plants. Chapter 4, Pragmatic Evolution: Applications of Evolutionary Theory (Aldo Poiani, ed.), Cambridge University Press.
• Shiwakoti N., M. Sarvi, G. Rose, and M. Burd. 2011. Animal dynamics based approach for modeling pedestrian crowd egress under panic conditions. Transportation Research B 45: 1433–1449.
• Burd, M. 2011. Are relationships between pollen-ovule ratio and pollen and seed size explained by sex allocation? Evolution 65: 3002–3005.
Shiwakoti N., M. Sarvi, G. Rose, and M. Burd. 2011. Animal dynamics based approach for modeling pedestrian crowd egress under panic conditions. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 17: 438–461.
• Shiwakoti N., M. Sarvi, G. Rose, and M. Burd. 2010. A biologically inspired modelling approach for collective pedestrian dynamics under emergency conditions. Transportation Research Record 2196: 176–184.
• Burd, M., N. Shiwakoti, M. Sarvi, and G. Rose. 2010. Nest architecture and traffic flow: large potential effects from small structural features. Ecological Entomology 35: 464–468.
• Brookes, R., L. K. Jesson, and M. Burd. 2010. Reproductive investment within inflorescences of Stylidium armeria varies with the strength of early resource committment. Annals of Botany 105: 697–705.
• Burd, M. 2010. Hunting, gathering, investing, globalizing: the biological roots of economic behaviour. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 27: 510–522.

 
Complete publication list

• Bruce, A. I., and M. Burd. 2012. Allometric scaling of foraging rate with trail dimensions in leaf-cutting ants. Proceedings of the Royal Society B in press.
• Waksberg, A. J., A. B. Smith, and M. Burd. 2012. Relative comparison and the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives: a model of decision making in an ecologically realistic environment. Journal of Bioeconomics in press.
• Kerswell, K. J., and M. Burd. 2012. Frequency-dependent and density-dependent larval competition between life-history strains of a fly, Lucilia cuprina. Ecological Entomology in press.

 
Complete publication list