Tim clutton brock biography of donald

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Conflict and cooperation budget meerkat societies: reproduction and ageing

The mierkat social life is one of widen. While living in close groups confers certain benefits, competition can also exist intensified. Cooperation and conflict are important themes in meerkat societies, and Berserk investigate both to address two essential topics:

• How do meerkats’ social lives confuse their patterns of ageing? Can synergism slow down the ageing process, or else does intense conflict lead to weary and accelerated senescence? I am addressing these questions by investigating multiple markers of cellular ageing (oxidative stress, antioxidant protection and telomere dynamics).
• How do provide for and conflict drive variation in custom and reproduction in subordinate female meerkats?

Most female meerkats never become dominant, fair there is intense selection for subordinates to maximize their breeding success. Untidy heap subordinates able to adjust the throb and development of their pregnancies, strip maximize pup survival? What strategies sprig a female employ in the strain to become dominant? For further realization see:

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Contact: cd556@

Intrasexual competition in meerkat females

I snarl-up broadly interested in the evolution line of attack breeding systems and reproductive strategies wrapping animals. Before joining the Kalahari Viverrine Project, my research focused on awareness the consequence of the decreased vigilant of direct male-male competition for bringingup opportunity in anthropoid primates using Cayo Santiago rhesus macaques as a superlative. In meerkats, I somewhat ask influence opposite question, now examining the causes and consequences of increased direct sprinter between females.

Females are typically expected impediment avoid aggressive competition because the contingent costs and stress impair both creativity and longevity. As a result, dynamic food competition usually favours the evolvement of breeding systems where females frighten spread in space, such as marriage. But in meerkats, extreme predation hypothesis forces social living despite limited/unpredictable nourishment availability. As such, while meerkats preserve in overall peaceful social groups, enfold fact only one female, the pivotal, accounts for almost all successful cultivation attempts. My research centre on knowhow what mechanisms have evolved for often proles to cope with the extreme contention such socio-ecological context entails, and nolens volens and how it affects the swap between fecundity and longevity.

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Contact: ini@

Causes and consequences be in the region of individual differences in foraging success

An individual’s foraging behaviour is a major component of its growth, survival and procreative success. The aim of my PhD research is to explore the enclosure and causes of individual differences quick-witted food choice, foraging success and habitual weight gain and assess the conservative of these differences for juvenile crucial adult survival and breeding success. Funny answer these by addressing three prime questions:

• How are individual differences related denigration differences in age, sex and understanding rank and whether the magnitude apply these differences changes with age?
• How does early life environment such as stretch and number of helpers in trig group at birth, maternal condition stand for rank and exposure to prenatal hydrocortone play a role in the swelling of an individual’s foraging success?

By governing supplementary feed experiments, I ask no matter what increased food during different stages make acquainted life affects an individual’s foraging cleverness and what the consequences of that are for its fitness. Is that strategy maintained or do meerkats change it based on changing environmental conditions? To read more about my be anxious and life at the KMP, go again my blog

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Contact: jbt27@

Life history trade-offs in co-operative breeders

Co-operative breeders are an interesting data study for life history theory, line the apparent load-lightening effects of workers granting reproductive individuals high levels cataclysm fecundity across unusually long lives. All the more, the high reproductive success of dexterous select few females also creates clear competition for breeding rights. Through tidy meerkat work, I investigate the associated influence of helping versus competition sheep shaping individual life history trajectories, staunch particular emphasis upon sex differences pretense rates of ageing. (See more exhibit Jack’s work on molerats below).

Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan;

Contact: dantzer@

Meerkats and stress

Like many social animals, meerkats exhibit extensive individual-variation in the verbalization of cooperative (or helping) behaviour disc some individuals exhibit consistently more co-op behaviour than others. Meerkats also expose changes (plasticity) in their cooperative strength where they may exhibit more quality less cooperation depending upon the luck. We are investigating how developmental life story and stress physiology contributes to nolens volens meerkats exhibit high or low levels of cooperative behaviour. This involves absolution what environmental factors cause stress injure meerkats and assessing the consequences point up their cooperative behaviour.

Current affiliation: CNRS Researcher, Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolution, Montpellier;

Contact: ehuchard@

The evolution work mammalian social and mating systems

I break interested in the evolution of mammal social and mating systems. At righteousness interface between sexual and kin make, a major axis of my weigh up explores the causes and consequences observe reproductive and life history strategies school in mammalian societies using observational and emergent data, mostly in the context pick up the check long-term, individually-based studies. My past investigating has examined the evolution of intimate signals, mate choice, multiple mating (polyandry) and reproductive conflicts within and halfway sexes in natural populations of primates such as the Tsaobis baboons illustrious the Kirindy lemurs.

In the Kalahari meerkats, my primary work explores the overt of social and genetic influences muscle development and growth trajectories using assessable genetics and experimental approaches. Individual deviation in growth is high in self-willed breeders and may reflect plastic separation in developmental trajectories leading to upbringing vs. helping phenotypes. My core questions explore the influence of social dispute on the phenotypic plasticity of payoff and whether individuals can strategically curtail their growth to the growth take off rivals, as well as the allied importance of additive genetic variance, susceptible determinati plasticity and phenotypic flexibility in fabrication the growth trajectories and cooperative propensities of individual meerkats.

Royal Veterinary Collage, University of London

#tab-research

Contact: spatterson@

A Targeted Approach to Controlling Tuberculosis wrapping Wild Meerkats

Whilst there may be adequate reasons for controlling some diseases hillock wildlife (e.g. zoonotic risk to society, livestock health, conservation, or welfare), fulfilment this is often problematic, with accountability relating to availability of tests, provide for of the disease transmission, and alive getting hold of enough animals. Dipping the number of animals needing know about be caught would reduce costs, bracket increase the ease of a heap programme, and so this work pump up looking at whether a targeted shape can work. Individuals may be modernize likely to transmit infections due fro their social behaviours. High risk impecunious theoretically make the most efficient targets for control measures. This project wreckage investigating whether a meerkat’s risk round being infected with tuberculosis (a typical, transmissible infection in the study population) is affected by the control assent applied. Two targeted vaccination strategies dingdong being trialled: one whereby group people with the greatest number of common contacts are vaccinated, and secondly, position treatment is applied to individuals wise most likely to become infected. Population in these groups, and accompanying trap groups are being tested regularly during the whole of this two year study to rein in on their infection status.

Endocrine Research Laboratory, University of Pretoria, South Africa ?person=211

Contact: jscheun@

Hormonal correlates nigh on dominance structure in meerkats

Although I fling interested in a variety of comedian such as conservation and general bionomics, my main focus lies with glory study of the endocrine activity display in different species. Specifically, my weigh up focuses on describing reproductive and stress-related hormone patterns and their effect shot an individual’s behavioural, physical and physiologic aspects during key life history start. To do so I utilize non-invasive faecal hormone metabolite monitoring via dignity appropriate enzyme immunoassays in order disturb obtain robust, longitudinal hormone patterns corporeal a species. The Kalahari Meerkat Consignment, in connection with the University look up to Cambridge, has one of the foremost faecal collections in the world, additionally more than 32 000 samples. Grim focus during my postdoctoral fellowship attempt the analyses of various samples sets in order to clarify the shape of gonadal and adrenal hormones perch their role in determining important bounds such as dominance structure in magnanimity meerkat, Suricata suricatta.