SEXUAL SELECTION

Ecological and life-history bases of sexual selection and sex roles in birds

Coordinatore	THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD    more  Organization address address: FIRTH COURT WESTERN BANK city: SHEFFIELD postcode: S10 2TN contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Joanne Cognome: Watson Email: send email Telefono: +44 114 222 4754 Fax: +44 114 222 1455
Nazionalità Coordinatore	United Kingdom [UK]
Totale costo	273˙480 €
EC contributo	273˙480 €
Programma	FP7-PEOPLE Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)
Code Call	FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF
Funding Scheme	MC-IEF
Anno di inizio	2011
Periodo (anno-mese-giorno)	2011-09-01   -   2013-08-31

 Partecipanti

#	participant	country	role	EC contrib. [€]
1	THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD  Organization address address: FIRTH COURT WESTERN BANK city: SHEFFIELD postcode: S10 2TN contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Joanne Cognome: Watson Email: send email Telefono: +44 114 222 4754 Fax: +44 114 222 1455	UK (SHEFFIELD)	coordinator	273˙480.00

Mappa

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Sexual selection is widely viewed as one of the major mechanisms of evolution and impacts on a wide range of organisms’ traits from the genomic level to social behaviour. Here I propose a multidisciplinary research programme that combines the approaches and tools of evolutionary biology, brain research and advanced phylogenetic statistics to investigate three fundamental but controversial aspects of sexual selection. First, the causative relationship proposed between the intensity of sexual selection and the disparity in parental care between the sexes is ambiguous. Using a large dataset on reproductive behaviour, ecology and life history of birds and new directional comparative methods I will test whether evolutionary changes in intensity of sexual determines parental care patterns or vice versa. Furthermore, I will test new hypotheses on the relationships of sexual selection to finer components of care, and also to parental sex roles, not investigated by earlier works. Second, I will conduct new analyses on how sexual selection affects (or is affected by) brain size evolution, including tests to explore causative relationships between these traits and also between brain size and parental sex roles. Finally, I will investigate how sexual selection affects the rates of phenotypic changes, that is important for the understanding of basic evolutionary processes (e.g. speciation) but has been rarely estimated empirically by comparative studies. The proposed projects will provide an excellent opportunity to learn new research methods and to produce new and valuable scientific results in the field of evolutionary biology. The Fellowship will also strength my research management and communication skills, and increase my general knowledge on international science that is essential for my future academic career from running independent research to high quality teaching.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Sexual selection is one of the major drivers of evolution. Recent research has delved into its impact on parental care in birds.