Scientific coordinator: Vincent Viblanc
The PACE team will study physiological and behavioral flexibility as adaptations to changing environments. We will study animal physiological and behavioral flexibility as evolved traits, allowing individuals to cope with variation in the biotic (conspecifics, predators, parasites, food resources) and climatic change in natural environments. PACE will focus on adaptation in insects, mammals, amphibians, and birds, relying both on life history approaches using long-term data sets from wild animals, and experimental approaches conducted both in the laboratory and in the field. It will center on the research areas of ecophysiology, evolutionary ecology, behavioral ecology, and sociobiology, working from the molecular, to individual and population levels. PACE researchers will study: how animals succeed in breeding, survival or performing in a changing world via physiological and behavioral flexibility? Their activities will be centered around the following themes:
- Understanding animal adaptations to energy constraints imposed by the environment including strategies such as thermoregulation, food availability/fasting, hibernation, aestivation and locomotion
- Understanding the evolution of animal life history traits and pace-of-life such as variation in phenology, metabolic rates, age at sexual maturity, organism senescence, reproductive costs
- Understanding the evolution of animal structural and functional traits such as body size, immunity, oxygen transport
- Understanding the evolution of animal sociality, with a particular focus on social stress and the co-evolution of sociality and ageing