
Latest publications
- 2019 Journal of Evolutionary Biology 32(1): 111-125 Harsh conditions during early development influence telomere length in an altricial passerine: links with oxidative stress and corticosteroids.
- 2017 Oecologia, 185(4):629-639. The role of the mating system and intraspecific brood parasitism in the costs of reproduction in a passerine bird.
- 2015 Ethology Do yellow-bellied marmots perceive enhanced predation risk when they are farther from safety? an experimental study
- 2015 Physiology & Behavior Intrauterine position as a predictor of postnatal growth and survival in the rabbit
- 2014 Evolutionary Ecology Yellow-bellied marmots do not compensate for a late start: the role of maternal allocation in shaping life-history trajectories
- 2014 Behavioural Processes Context-dependent responses to neighbours and strangers in wild European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus)
- 2013 Functional Ecology in press Long-term effects of litter sex ratio on female reproduction in two iteroparous mammals
- 2011 Hormores and Behavior 60: 660-665 Older mothers follow conservative strategies under predator pressure: the adaptive role of maternal glucocorticoids in yellow-bellied marmots
- 2011 General and Comparative Endocrinology, in press Fecal glucocorticoid metabolites in wild yellow-bellied marmots: experimental validation, individual differences and ecological correlates.
- 2011 Journal of Animal Ecology 81: 80-86 Litter sex composition affects life-history traits in yellow-bellied marmots
Raquel Monclús
Senior lecturer (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord)
Research Themes
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.
Curriculum Vitae
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.