Research Interests
Animal behaviour and the ultimate/proximate backgrounds of behavioural decisions
Animal behaviour has fascinated me since my childhood. In any moment, animals have to make behavioural decisions, and it is amazing how natural selection made them very good at it. During my PhD I studied the social behaviour of sparrows and it was very intriguing to learn that they can very flexibly switch between alternative options and the outcome was very close to what theoretical optimality models predicted. Therefore I became interested in the background of these decisions. First, what are the factors that determine the choice between the alternative strategies? Why those factors? What are the payoffs of the tactics? On the other hand, I also find exciting to know how animals make their decisions? What are the proximate (e.g. hormonal) factors that govern their behaviour? I investigate these questions in field and lab experiments and in phylogenetic comparative analyses.
Physiological stress response and hormonal plasticity
I am interested in the physiological stress response and in the role that 'stress hormones' may play in the regulation of parental behaviour and in the mediation of life-history trade-offs. However, individuals often show huge variations in how they react to the same stressors. I study the sources and consequences of among- and within-individual variation of stress response.
Mechanisms of Life History Evolution and IGF-1
More recently, I became interested in the
mechanisms that have a profound effect on the evolution of life
histories and ageing. Among those mechanisms we study insulin-like
growth factor 1(IGF-1) in several bird species. Birds are extremely
interesting organisms to study life history, lifespan and ageing,
because they live substantially longer than size-matched mammals and
the reasons for this difference are still not well understood. While
the effects of IGF-1 are well studied in laboratory organisms, we
know very little is known about the role of this hormone in wild
species, especially birds and even less in adults. Because avian
IGF-1 is different from its mammalian homologue, we have recently
developped a specific immunoassay to measure avian IGF-1 from blood
samples.
Keywords:
Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1)
Life-history trade-offs
Stress response, corticosterone
Hormonal basis of behaviour
Social foraging
Sexual selection
Multiple ornaments
Survival modelling
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