He uses mathematical modelling as well as experimental research in both the field and the lab, and has published papers on parental care and parent-offspring interactions in journals as, for example, The American Naturalist, Animal Behaviour, Behavioral Ecology, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B. After he finished his PhD in Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Bern he went as a postdoctoral research fellow to Indiana University in Bloomington, where he developed mathematical models of parent-offspring coadaptation and did experimental research on insect parental care and parent-offspring interactions. After this postdoc, he moved to the University of Basel to establish a research group working in these areas.