Behaviour as part of a life history: mechanisms and function
Final Report Abstract
This research project was associated with my Heisenberg-Professorship and allowed me to develop two rather different research programmes further. Hence, the scope of this research project was probably unusually broad: The establishment and analysis of selection lines for personality traits in zebra finches and the linkage between life history traits, population ecology and plumage polymorphism and candidate genes in the common buzzard. The zebra finch selection line project was initially significantly delayed due to facilities in Bielefeld being made available with over year delay but also my naivety in believing that standardised personality tests should work without modification. The project is now progressing reasonably well, albeit at a slower speed than initially predicted. Nevertheless, we have established bidirectional selection lines for aggression, exploration and fearfulness and have shown that personality covaries with both cognition as well as reproductive traits. We also tested whether the well-known pigmentation candidate gene Mc1R can explain plumage morphs in zebra finches, but the associations we found were due to population divergence. The establishment of selection lines will allow a variety of future research questions to be addressed. The common buzzard project has shown exemplarily, how a link between life history traits, behaviour, a striking phenotypic polymorphism and candidate genes might be established. We have focussed on the timing of breeding as well as blood parasites. While results are not always as clear-cut as initially hoped, we have been able to document a suite of differences between the different plumage morphs across breeding phenology, immune function and parasite prevalence and parasite load which we are starting to link to candidate genes or gene expression levels. At the same time as we try to look at genetic variation, we also generalise from individual behaviour and life histories to the population level. Here, we have documented how important habitat heterogeneity is in generating density-dependent feedbacks and that both common buzzard and goshawk are affected by intra-guild predation. Future work in this system will continue to look at genetic mechanisms for the fitness variation between individuals but will also address the population level consequences.
Publications
- (2010) Mesopredator release by an emergent superpredator: a natural experiment of predation in a three level guild. PLoS One 5: e15229
Chakarov, N. & Krüger, O.
- (2012) Population regulation by habitat heterogeneity or individual adjustment? J. Anim. Ecol. 81: 330- 340
Krüger, O., Chakarov, N., Nielsen, J.T., Looft, V., Grünkorn, T., Struwe-Juhl, B. & Møller, A.P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01904.x) - (2013) Behavioural flexibility and personality in zebra finches. Ethology 119: 559-569
Brust, V., Wuerz, Y. & Krüger, O.
- (2013) No correlation between multilocus heterozygosity and fitness in the common buzzard despite heterozygote advantage for plumage colour. J. Evol. Biol. 26: 2233-2243
Boerner, M., Hoffman, J.I., Amos, W., Chakarov, N. & Krüger, O.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12221) - (2013) Variation at phenological candidate genes correlates with timing of dispersal and plumage morph in a sedentary bird of prey. Mol. Ecol. 22: 5430-5440
Chakarov, N., Jonker, R. M., Boerner, M., Hoffman, J. I. & Krüger, O.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.12493) - (2014) Lifelong consequences of early nutritional conditions on learning performance in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Behav. Proc. 103: 320-326
Brust, V., Krüger, O., Naguib, M. & Krause, E. T.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.01.019) - (2015) A comparison of spontaneous problem solving abilities in three estrildid finch species. J. Comp. Psychol. 129: 356-365
Schmelz, M., Krüger, O., Call, J. & Krause, E.T.
(See online at https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0039646) - (2015) Apparent vector-mediated parent-to-offspring transmission in an avian malaria-like parasite. Mol. Ecol. 24: 1355-1363
Chakarov, N., Linke, B., Boerner, M., Goesmann, A., Krüger, O. & Hoffman, J.I.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.13115) - (2015) De novo assembly of the dual transcriptomes of a polymorphic raptor species and its malarial parasite. BMC Genomics 16: 1038
Pauli, M., Chakarov, N., Rupp, O., Kalinowski, J., Goesmann, A., Sorenson, M. D., Krüger, O. & Hoffman, J. I.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-015-2254-1) - (2015) Personality over ontogeny in zebra finches: long-term repeatable traits but unstable behavioural syndromes. Front. Zool. 12: Suppl. 1: S9
Wuerz, Y. & Krüger, O.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-12-S1-S9)
