Events at the MPIAB

The physical characteristics of the environment largely determine the cost of transport for moving animals. This concept is termed "the energy landscape" and is particularly evident for soaring birds, as they exploit the atmospheric currents, both horizontal and vertical, to achieve low-cost flight. The goal of my research is to uncover how the interaction between soaring birds and the energy landscape shapes optimal movement and distribution patterns. I also explore how the ability to perform optimally, to maximize energy gain from the environment during flight and migration, develops as birds age. In my talk, I will present several past and current projects, on multiple species of terrestrial birds and seabirds, that contribute to achieving these goals and advancing the concept of energy landscape. [more]

Scientific research is a complex endeavour. At the same time, it is the task of scientists as part of the society to make central findings of research accessible to the general public. Current approaches tend towards a strong simplification and illustration of results. At the same time, however, it is important to communicate the prerequisites, genesis of knowledge and limitations of research to prevent an absolutist or relativist public understanding of science. Meta-reflexive principles are introduced and discussed in the talk that can contribute to promoting an adequate post-relativistic view of the achievements and societal relevance of research in democracy. [more]

Ageing affects many phenotypic traits, but the declines in social behaviour that occur with age have only recently become apparent. Given the well-established fitness benefits associated with social connectedness, understanding why this ‘social ageing’ occurs will be important for integrating sociality into our understanding of the ageing process. Here, I will present a framework for disentangling the drivers of social ageing and will use 8-years of behavioural data from a population of free-ranging rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago to demonstrate evidence for one of these drivers - age-based social selectivity. I will discuss how age-based changes in social behaviour can feed up to influence an individual’s indirect connectedness in their network and overall patterns of network structure. Finally, by simulating pathogen spread through these social networks, I will explore whether social selectivity has the potential to provide benefits to older individuals by protecting against disease risk in later-life. Together, this talk will aim to demonstrate that social ageing may be an important and underappreciated aspect of an organism’s phenotype that could contribute to inter-individual variation in demographic senescence. [more]

Movement is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom. It is often shaped by individual-level responses to risk and resource distribution as well as individual characteristics (e.g. cognitive ability, physiology) which can have fitness consequences and drive evolutionary pathways. In addition, the cumulative movement of animals can drive ecological processes and influence environmental function. These impacts become magnified when releasing large numbers of animals into an environment for agricultural purposes. This places new tools and approaches for quantifying animal movement at the heart of both animal and environmental research in both fundamental and applied frameworks. In this talk I will present how I have used advances in sensors and animal mounted technology to better understand the movement of animals. I will show how I have used experimental approaches from the fields of animal behaviour, psychology, and ecology to disentangle the causes of the movement (e.g. individual cognition, physiological traits) as well as its consequences (e.g. on welfare, production, and environmental impact). This talk will focus on two model systems that are reared in captivity and then released into extensive systems in the UK where they have profound impacts on the environment: the sheep and the pheasant. [more]

After conducting extensive research on the origins of sociality and the evolution of the lion's mane, my research has become increasingly focused on the challenges of lion conservation. Lions are particularly difficult because of their enormous land requirements and the profound threat they pose to local people. Our conservation activities have inevitably involved engagement with national governments in reforming lion trophy hunting and with local communities in providing vaccination services for domestic dogs, protecting livestock from lion attacks, and facilitating grassland restoration in overgrazed pastures. Lion conservation requires large-scale efforts that may produce mixed results and unintended consequences, so it is essential to measure impacts and consider whether short-term successes will endure in the long-term. [more]

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Understanding the genetics of bird migration is a long-standing goal in evolutionary biology. Blackcaps Sylvia atricapilla are ideal for this work as different populations exhibit enormous difference in migratory behaviour and little else. We characterize (i) phenotype, population structure and demographic history the blackcap, and (ii) identify sequence variants and signaling pathways that are associated with variation of the migratory phenotype. My talk will cover insight from classical studies on selection and cross-breeding experiments, ring recovery data, tracking approaches in the wild, to finally introducing novel insight from using a de novo assembled genome of the blackcap as reference for large scale demographic study with different phenotypes across their breeding range. [more]