Home
I'm Thomas Hitchcock, a Research Scientist at iTHEMS, RIKEN. I am interested in how evolution has shaped the living world around us, and why organisms — from bacteria and plants to animals, including ourselves — appear and behave the way they do.
My research focuses on understanding the diversity of reproductive systems we see across the tree of life. Males may pass on only the genes they inherited from their mothers. Others switch sex partway through their lives. Some alternate between sexual and asexual reproduction depending on the season. I study how this diversity in the way genes are passed from parents to offspring shapes evolutionary processes and with it the traits organisms display, from the genetic to the behavioural.
To do this, I use mathematical models and computer simulations, often in close collaboration with other theoretical and empirical researchers around the world.
My research focuses on understanding the diversity of reproductive systems we see across the tree of life. Males may pass on only the genes they inherited from their mothers. Others switch sex partway through their lives. Some alternate between sexual and asexual reproduction depending on the season. I study how this diversity in the way genes are passed from parents to offspring shapes evolutionary processes and with it the traits organisms display, from the genetic to the behavioural.
To do this, I use mathematical models and computer simulations, often in close collaboration with other theoretical and empirical researchers around the world.