Marlene Zuk: I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan and taking a seminar course with W.
I looked up your publication profile in Google scholar and it seems like this was the first paper you published. Hari Sridhar: I want to start by asking you a little about your motivation to do the work presented in this paper. Science, 218(4570), 384-387.ĭate of interview: 19th October 2016 (via Skype) 19th December 2019 (in-person at Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) Heritable true fitness and bright birds: a role for parasites?. Twenty-four years after the paper was published, I spoke to Marlene Zuk about how this study came about, her collaboration with Bill Hamilton and what we have learnt since about the Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis.Ĭitation: Hamilton, W. Based on these results they proposed a “good genes” model of sexual selection (Hamilton-Zuk Hypothesis): display characteristics used in mate selection are indicators of parasite or disease resistance.
In a paper published in Science in 1982, William Hamilton and Marlene Zuk showed positive associations between the level of chronic blood infections and display characteristics across North American Passerines.