PAST PROJECTS
Postdoc
Individual behaviour is determined by both an individuals' genes and its environment, and the existence of differences among individuals is assumed to be adaptive. However, genetic effects are difficult to measure, and often require complex breeding designs.
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I looked at the interactive effects of genes and environment on individual behaviour in a facultatively clonal marine invertebrate, the sea anemone Anemonia viridis. This anemone can be easily reproduced asexually in the laboratory, allowing for complete experimental control of the animals' genetic background.
I chose to focus again on the effects of the social environment because individuals will influence one another in their behaviour, creating the opportunity to understand the importance of each of their genetic background, and of the intreaction of the two (what is called "indirect genetic effects"). In addition, I started investigating the physiology and population genetic of these animals, to inform the behavioural experiments.
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Collaborators:
Dr. Chris Lowe, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, UK
Prof. Alastair Wilson, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, UK
Prof. Mark Briffa, University of Plymouth, UK
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PhD
My PhD project was about the relationship between individual behavioural differences and the social environment in a cichlid fish.
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Individual behavioural differences refer to the fact that each animal's behaviour is consistently different from that of others, in time and across different situations.
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The species, Neolamprologus pulcher, is a cooperatively breeding fish from Lake Tanganyika, Africa, that lives in stable groups of related and unrelated individulas. Dominant individuals monopolize reproduction, and subordinates help the dominants in defending the territory and caring for the offspring, while waiting to gain dominance themselves. This stable social system is well suited to study the development and the role of individual behaviour in life history decisions.
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My work focused on the relationship between social roles and individual behaviour, defined as behavioural patterns that are unique to an individual and consistently different to the behaviour of others.
Part I: Testing the social niche hypothesis (Bergmuller Taborsky 2010)
I aimed at proving the validity of the social niche specialization hypothesis. This hypothesis postulates that the experience of a specific social environment during ontogeny can affect the behavioural development of individuals, and create different behavioural types.
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Part II: Individual behavioural types and social decision making
I investigated how the behavioural type of group members can influence acceptance of new individuals in a group, and how this is influenced by predation risk.
Part III: Aggression: methods and signals
I validated the method used to study individual aggression in fish, and checked which visual signals are used to communicate aggression in my study species.
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Supervisors:
Dr. Joachim Frommen, Institute for Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, CH
Prof. Michael Taborsky, Institute for Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, CH
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Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation
MSc
For my Master's degree I worked on phenotypic plasticity as a response to predation risk, in a European anadromous population of three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus).
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Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of an animal to change its phenotype (e.g. behaviour, morphology) in response to specific environmental cues. Under predation risk, animals are known to change their average behaviour, and fish often develop larger bodies that allow them to escape from gape-limited predators.
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In my thesis, I tested for the effects of both long-term and short-term exposure to predator olfactory cues on behaviour of three-spined sticklebacks.
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Supervisors:
Dr. Joachim Frommen, Konrad Lorentz Institute for Ecology and Evolution, Vienna, AT
Prof. Andrea Pilastro, Biology Department, University of Padova, IT
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Funding: Erasmus mobility program, EU