Feb 17, 2023
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Dr. Rebecca Rimbach
University of Münster
Department of Behavioural Biology
School of Animal, Plant & Enviornmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
How do environmental conditions alter the expression, stability, and consequences of individual phenotypic variation?
My research lies at the intersection of behavioral ecology, eco-physiology, and evolutionary ecology. I study how environmental conditions shape individual variation in behavior, physiology, and energetics, and how this variation influences animals’ responses to changing environments. A major focus of my research is understanding how animals cope with environmental heterogeneity and environmental change. This includes investigating behavioral and physiological responses to resource availability, social context, seasonal variation and anthropogenic change (e.g., urbanization & climate change), as well as the stability and flexibility of individual phenotypes across contexts. I combine field-based and experimental approaches to link behavior with physiology, energetics, ecology, and evolutionary processes in a broad range of taxa.
More broadly, my research asks when individual differences are stable, when they are context-dependent, and what consequences this variation has for animals living in changing environments.
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