About
Ido Pen is an Associate Professor at the University of Groningen, affiliated with the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences. His research focuses on theoretical evolutionary ecology, particularly the evolution of social behavior, sex allocation, and aging in social insects and other organisms. Key areas include eusociality evolution, parental effects, and temperature-driven sex determination mechanisms. Pen leads the Pen Group, which integrates theoretical models with empirical studies to explore evolutionary processes. Recent work examines inbreeding effects on reproductive senescence in birds, cooperative breeding dynamics, and maternal manipulation in eusociality origins.
His research spans diverse topics such as harbor seal rehabilitation, vocal coordination in gorillas, and pest control strategies for Drosophila suzukii. Projects often involve collaboration with international teams and interdisciplinary approaches, blending genetics, ecology, and mathematical modeling. Pen has supervised PhD students like John Kreider and Maria Santos Mira, contributing to datasets on social polymorphism and genetic sex determination. He actively engages in open science initiatives, advocating for community-driven preprint systems to accelerate ecological and evolutionary research dissemination.
Key contributions include theoretical frameworks on social insect caste determination and the role of environmental predictability in parental effects. His work frequently addresses evolutionary trade-offs, such as between survival and reproduction, and the interplay between genetic and epigenetic mechanisms in aging. Pen’s research also highlights the importance of understanding evolutionary feedback from adaptive plasticity, as seen in studies on sex ratio control and conflict resolution in insect societies.
