Department Animal Population Biology

The life-history of animals is the central and unifying theme of research by the Animal Population Biology department. We have a long standing history (1955 – present) of ecological studies on hole-breeding passerines, such as the great tit, in the wild.

While our four long-term studies are still going strong, our research is now broadened to include aviary facilities to study birds from our wild populations under controlled conditions. Our research aims at understanding the response of organisms to changing conditions at different time scales. To understand the response’s of organisms to these changes at we need to study the proximate mechanisms (including their genetic architecture) underlying these responses (our aviary studies and our molecular genetics work) as well as the selection, i.e. the ultimate factors, acting on these mechanisms (our work on wild populations).

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