Gisela Kopp

We are lacking an overarching framework that explicitly integrates behavioural ecology with macroevolution to identify the factors and processes that link behavioural traits with genomic evolution and diversification processes. This project will fill this gap by building the links in the explanatory chain that connect behavioural traits to diversification. To accomplish this, it will follow four parallel and complementary lines of research:
I. Which data and analyses are needed to efficiently describe diverse social systems across taxa in a quantitative way?
II. Do these descriptors consistently correlate with measures of genetic structure and diversity across taxa?
III. Is genetic structure and diversity a predictor of diversification and species richness?
IV. Do certain behavioural traits, through their effects on diversity and differentiation, impact diversification patterns on a
macroevolutionary scale?
These questions will be adressed by using approaches from different biological disciplines, including remote and automated colleciton of behavioural data in wild animal populations using novel tracking technologies, social network analysis of animal societies, comparative analysis of georeferenced DNA sequences, non-invasive population genomics, estimation of trait-dependent diversification rates and phylogenetic comparative methods.