Behavioral ecology examines the evolutionary and ecological foundations of animal behavior. It addresses the question of how behavior is shaped by natural selection in order to maximize an individual's fitness as a function of the ecological context.
© Carolin Bleese
Our research seeks to understand the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that generate and maintain diversity in animal behaviour, life history, morphology, and other phenotypic traits. We study variation at multiple scales: among species, among populations within species, among individuals within populations, and - for repeatedly expressed traits, like behaviour - instances within individuals. To do so, we analyse various forms of selection - natural, sexual, and social - using quantitative genetics approaches. This allows us to predict the evolution of social and non-social traits that are themselves unobservable but can be distilled from observed variables, such as an individual’s or genotype’s average level of behaviour (personality) or trait variability (predictability, plasticity). Further, we focus on mechanisms shaping the integration of multiple, varying traits, such as those resulting in pace-of-life syndromes, animal personalities, and other behavioural or morphological strategies.
© Carolin Bleese
We test contemporary hypotheses in ecology and evolution, particularly the evolution of cryptic unobservable traits that can be estimated as latent variables from observations such as personality, plasticity, and predictability. We achieve this using a combination of advanced quantitative genetic, statistical, simulation, and experimental techniques. In order to acquire unbiased estimates of latent traits at multiple, hierarchical levels, we need big sample sizes, careful study design, and complex analysis.
We develop and utilize simulation models to reveal which combination of study design and sampling scheme are optimal for our analyses. To collect our data, we perform long-term experimental manipulations in populations from different species, both in the laboratory and in the wild. Specifically, we use pedigreed data from our long-term, longitudinal experiments - using nest-box breeding birds (blue and great tits), insects (field crickets), and cnidarians (anemones) as model systems. We analyse these data using cutting-edge Bayesian multi-level modelling techniques (e.g. errors-in-variables models, covariance-reaction-norm models, animal models, structural equation models). Combined, these approaches allow us to robustly test generalizable theory about the evolution of diversity at multiple scales.
© Carolin Bleese
Réale D, Allegue H, Araya-Ajoy YG, Dochtermann NA, Nakagawa S, Pick JL, Schielzeth H, Westneat DF and Dingemanse NJ (2026) Avoiding misleading estimates of among‐individual variance caused by non‐random sampling of individuals in a changeable environment. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.70202.
Han CS, Robledo Ruiz D, Garcia-Gonzalez F, Dingemanse NJ and Tuni C (2024) Unraveling mate choice evolution through indirect genetic effects. Evolution Letters 8, 841-850. https://doi.org/DOI10.1093/evlett/qrae037.
Mouchet A, Cole EF, Matthysen E, Nicolaus M, Quinn JL, Roth AM, Tinbergen JM, van Oers K, van Overveld T and Dingemanse NJ (2021) Heterogeneous selection on exploration behavior within and among West European populations of a bird. PNAS 118(28), e2024994118. https://doi.org/DOI10.1073/pnas.2024994118
Dingemanse NJ, Barber I and Dochtermann NA (2020) Non-consumptive effects of predation: does perceived risk strengthen the genetic integration of behaviour and morphology in stickleback? Ecology Letters 23, 107-118. https://doi.org/DOI10.1111/ele.13413
Dingemanse NJ and Dochtermann NA (2013) Quantifying individual variation in behaviour: mixed-effect modelling approaches. J. Anim. Ecol. 82, 39-54. https://doi.org/DOI10.1111/1365-2656.12013
