Investigating movement-hormone feedbacks as a basis for habitat specialization

In nature, animals must make decisions about where to find food. Looking for food, however, exposes animals to the risk of being eaten by predators and forces them to compete with other animals for food. This combination of risk and competition is stressful, and animals respond by releasing hormones help them cope. Initially, a common coping mechanism is to move from stressful habitats to safer habitats with fewer predators and competitors. However, safer habitats often provide less food, which also causes stress, and eventually animals must move from safer habitats back to stressful habitats to find food. How much time an animal spends in either habitat affects the hormones they produce, which habitats they move to next, and the levels of stress they experience, potentially creating feedbacks between hormones and habitat use that could cause animals to specialize on different habitats. We will be testing these feedback relationships to understand how animals respond differently to stress, and whether these individual responses affect the different decisions they make about where to find food. This initial research question will seed future collaborations between my home and host institutions.

Faculty Supervisor:

Eric Vander Wal

Student:

Partner:

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Life Sciences (not health); Sustainability & the Environment

University:

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Program: