Raquel Monclús

My research can be divided in two main topics. On the one hand I am interested in the indirect effects of predators. Under the risk of predation animals make decisions according to their perception of the risk. These decisions might depend on internal or external traits of the individual, such as body condition, age, predator pressure, etc. However, there are costs associated, as anti-predator behaviours trade-off with maintenance activities (feeding, reproduction). I want to disentangle the long-term effects of anti-predator behaviour on the fitness of an individual. On the other hand, I am studying the fitness effects of early life conditions. In particular, I am interested in maternal and sibling effects, and how they modulate an animal´s life-history.

I am working with different species, as they offer different possibilities to answer the questions I am interested in. During my PhD I worked with European rabbits in Germany. I studied the behavioural and physiological responses of rabbits to predators in a semi-natural environment. Afterwards, I got a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. There I participated in a long-term project studying yellow-bellied marmots in and around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado. When I came back to Spain I became a lecturer in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and since then I am a member of the Behavioural Ecology and Endocrinology Lab. I aim to study whether predator pressure affects maternal decision in the spotless starling.