Objective
This project will study the evolutionary ecology of senescence – how and why biological performance declines with age. Understanding senescence in nature requires us to study interactions between the environment and natural and sexual selection and how they shape patterns of ageing. I will study life-history trade-offs in both lab and natural environments exploiting an existing project on a wild cricket population that has amassed 12 years of data. My study system consists of annual generations of a few hundred individually tagged, video-monitored and genotyped individuals. This system will allow me to address evolutionary questions about senescence that are very hard to study in much longer lived vertebrates. My approach of studying senescence in both lab and field environments is timely in the face of the current state of the art showing that the fitness outcomes of genetically controlled pathways with pleiotropic early and late-life effects depend on the environment in which they are studied. I will use techniques in eco-physiology (telomere measurements), animal breeding (quantitative genetics), and evolutionary ecology (life-history trade-offs and animal behaviour) to study the extent to which (i) telomeres can be used as biomarker of ageing in insects, (ii) life-history trade-offs including behaviour underpinning senescence, and (iii) the extent to which these phenotypic correlations are also expressed as genetic correlations i.e. are they heritable? These questions are key to solving the enigma of ageing, and their answers will be important for research aimed at understanding processes that drive the demographic ageing of Europe’s society. In my past research I led an eight-year experiment testing the trade-off between reproduction and ageing and telomere shortening in a large wild bird population (papers in Ecol. Lett. 2014 & 2015 & Proc.Soc.B 2014). I am excited to switch to insects to address questions that have never been tackled in their natural context.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics
- natural sciences biological sciences zoology ornithology
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology evolutionary ecology
- natural sciences biological sciences zoology entomology
- natural sciences biological sciences biological behavioural sciences ethology
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2017
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
EX4 4QJ Exeter
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.