© Universität Bielefeld
Team
Our work group includes various projects and sub-groups. We have therefore built up our team page according to our subject areas; also to provide an overview of which people are involved in which projects.
Raptors & Owls
- Oliver Krüger (Head of Project Group)
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Pricipal Investigator of Animal Behaviour
The unifying feature of my different research projects is life history strategy evolution, the way natural selection optimises the entire life of an organism. Differences between individuals and their life histories are evaluated by natural selection on the basis of fitness. Hence it is of paramount importance to measure fitness if we want to attach biological meaningfulness to animal behaviour. However, animal behaviour and life history strategies do not evolve in isolation. Individual behaviour is bound to have consequences at the population level and, conversely, populations set the stage for the evolution of life history strategies and animal behaviour. As a consequence, by studying life history strategies, my research is encompassed by a triangle of evolution, ecology and ethology. Only detailed knowledge of individual fitness allows one to decompose individual behavioural variation into components of genotypic and phenotypic quality, as well as environmental effects.
- Nayden Chakarov
Research Interests
- Population genetics of parasites
- Maintenance of polymorphisms
- Jamie Winternitz
- Kai Philipp Gladow
- Meinolf Ottensmann
- Tony Rinaud
- Tim Rapp
- Hugo de Eira Pereira
- Josefine Eisermann
Sea Lion Project Galápagos
- Oliver Krüger (Head of Project Group)
- Zum Hauptinhalt der Sektion wechseln
Pricipal Investigator of Animal Behaviour
The unifying feature of my different research projects is life history strategy evolution, the way natural selection optimises the entire life of an organism. Differences between individuals and their life histories are evaluated by natural selection on the basis of fitness. Hence it is of paramount importance to measure fitness if we want to attach biological meaningfulness to animal behaviour. However, animal behaviour and life history strategies do not evolve in isolation. Individual behaviour is bound to have consequences at the population level and, conversely, populations set the stage for the evolution of life history strategies and animal behaviour. As a consequence, by studying life history strategies, my research is encompassed by a triangle of evolution, ecology and ethology. Only detailed knowledge of individual fitness allows one to decompose individual behavioural variation into components of genotypic and phenotypic quality, as well as environmental effects.
- Jonas Schwarz
- Svenja Stöhr
- Alexandra Kate Childs
- Fritz Trillmich (Professor emeritus, advisory)
We investigate life history- and reproductive strategies.
Sex, age at maturity, litter size, offspring size at birth and length of reproductive cycles count among important life history features. Reproduction represents one of the most important aspects in the life history of an individual and parental care represents one important component of fitness. One focus of our investigations concerns allocation decisions and trade-offs in parental care. As parental care is a valuable and limited resource, conflict about parental care is expected. Our investigations are carried out using guinea pigs, cavies and sea lions.
We focus on:
- Plasticity of behaviour and physiology
- Allocation decisions
- costs of reproduction and brood care
- parent-offspring conflicts
- reproductive strategies of males and females
- effects of an unpredictable environment (global warming) on population dynamics
Host-Parasite Interactions
- Nayden Chakarov (Head of Project Group)
- Curriculum Vitae
- Publications
- Courses
I am an old-school bird-guy with a strongly developed taste for parasites. So far I've been concentrating on avian malaria-like parasites, but expansion is likely. I also have a quite strong interest in long-lived birds and have achieved some intimacy with birds of prey. They also like getting under my skin.
My research focuses on the ecology and evolution of infection, host-parasite coexistence, resistance and tolerance. I combine diverse methods, ranging from behavioural observation to using individual-based data, long-term population and genomic analyses, richly garnished with loads of fieldwork. Ultimately, my research aims at understanding why some parasites are less deadly and damaging than their reputation suggests.
I am also quite fascinated by discrete phenotypic polymorphisms, e.g. plumage polymorphisms. These are still quite enigmatic in their genetic and selection underpinnings, but appear to be one of the major life-history determinants in some species (or maybe attractants to the researchers of those species). Discrete polymorphisms seem to much too often correlate with a bunch of other probably selected traits. I believe with a good amount of work there is a lot about life to be understood there. Not insignificantly, discrete polymorphisms seem to often correlate with infection-related traits, which bring together my field of interest.
Research Interests
- Host-parasite coevolution
- Mechanisms of resistance and tolerance and transmission
- Discrete phenotypic polymorphisms
- Oliver Krüger
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- Jamie Winternitz
- Tony Rinaud
Research Interests
Interested by bird ecology for many years, I studied community and population dynamics, as well as interspecific competition as parts of my early research career.
During my current PhD project, I focus on host-parasite interactions in a long-term monitored population of common buzzard (Buteo buteo) and their co-evolutionary partners, a species of blood parasites (Leucocytozoon).
My research are questionning ecological and evolutionary processes such as parasite-induced fitness consequences in juvenile hosts, their physiological and molecular responses to these parasites or understanding the timing and intensity of host defenses involved in these responses.
Various methods were used to answer this problematics: physiology and morphometric measures, blood chemistry and transcriptomic analyses.
Utlimately, my project will enlight on how young long-lived raptors cope with highly transmitted parasites and the intrinsic mechanisms of their defense components.
- Tim Maximilian Rapp
- Anja Wiegmann
Causes for Individual Variation
- Oliver Krüger (Head of Project Group)
- Zum Hauptinhalt der Sektion wechseln
Pricipal Investigator of Animal Behaviour
The unifying feature of my different research projects is life history strategy evolution, the way natural selection optimises the entire life of an organism. Differences between individuals and their life histories are evaluated by natural selection on the basis of fitness. Hence it is of paramount importance to measure fitness if we want to attach biological meaningfulness to animal behaviour. However, animal behaviour and life history strategies do not evolve in isolation. Individual behaviour is bound to have consequences at the population level and, conversely, populations set the stage for the evolution of life history strategies and animal behaviour. As a consequence, by studying life history strategies, my research is encompassed by a triangle of evolution, ecology and ethology. Only detailed knowledge of individual fitness allows one to decompose individual behavioural variation into components of genotypic and phenotypic quality, as well as environmental effects.
- Sabine Kraus (Head of Project Group)
My research focuses on causes & consequences of consistent individual differences in behaviour. I mainly work on selection lines in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). In collaborative projects, I work on effects on the development of individual differences in wild guinea pigs (Cavia aperea), the influence of the microbiome on behaviour, as well as on the inheritance of certain behavioural traits.
- Eike Tobias Krause
- Lisa Kalnins
- Nadine Schubert
It always fascinated me how genetics and immunology might act together to drive behaviour. I am thus investigating potential relationships between the MHC, microbiota and body odour in banded mongooses. Furthermore I am interested in the anatomy of scent glands, population genetics of mongoose populations in zoos, movement ecology and conservation.
- Navina Liebermann-Lilie
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- Stephen Salazar
- Sophia Quante
- Louisa Bierbaum
- Josefine Eisermann
