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Summary

Social behaviour receives broad interest as most animals live in social environments, their lives affected by others. Given the complexities of social evolution we have limited understanding of the environmental and social factors that determine individual fitness in wild populations. However, recent advances in molecular and statistical techniques have contributed to what we know about social behaviour. I focus on how social interactions of cooperative behaviours influence the expression of individuals’ parenting and helping behaviour, and the consequences this has for their lifetime fitness. The Seychelles warbler provides a system in which comprehensive long-term data on the constitution of breeding groups (dominants, co-breeders, (non-)helpers), relatedness between individuals and accurate measures of lifetime reproductive success have been collected across environments. This enables elucidating factors driving the evolutionary dynamics of social systems and to gain insight into selection on individual behaviour to allow adaptation to changing (social) environments.

Jam Komdeur

"My research is in Behavioural Ecology, which focuses on behavioural adaptations in relation to ecological and social conditions. In theory, natural selection should favour behavioural strategies that best promote an individual’s ability to pass copies of its genes on to future generations. This creates conflict in animal populations, not only between, for example, rivals contesting territories but also within seemingly harmonious ventures such as family groups. My research aim is to understand how genes and ecology interact to shape the evolution of social behaviours and how this affects reproductive strategies, population dynamics and selection. My goal for the upcoming years is to unravel how the social environment and the genetic architecture of individuals mould behavioural responses at the individual level, and the short- and long-term consequences of these behavioural responses for phenotype, population and species persistence..."

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