Project description
Social behaviour across birds
Social behaviour varies enormously across animal species, from highly affiliative societies to dominance-based hierarchies. Understanding how conserved brain circuits generate this diversity is a fundamental challenge in neuroscience, with implications for animal welfare and human health. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the NeuroBirds project compares two bird species with contrasting social systems: the budgerigar and the Japanese quail. The aim is to investigate how ecological pressures shape neural circuit recruitment. Researchers will undertake a multidisciplinary approach to determine how hormonal signalling and distinct inhibitory neuron types within the social decision-making brain network produce divergent social strategies. Project findings will advance our understanding of the evolutionary flexibility of conserved brain systems.
Objective
Understanding how conserved brain circuits generate diverse social behaviours is a key challenge in evolutionary neuroscience, with important implications for animal welfare, conservation, and human health. NeuroBirds addresses this gap by comparing two evolutionarily distant bird species with contrasting social systems: the highly affiliative budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus) and the Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica), characterised by strict dominance hierarchies and aggressive interactions. These models provide a powerful framework to test how ecological pressures shape the recruitment of conserved neural circuits.
The project will integrate behavioural experiments, brain activation mapping, and molecular profiling. I hypothesise that budgerigars will activate reward-related pathways when encountering unfamiliar conspecifics, whereas quails will engage aggression-related circuits. These differences are expected to be mediated by hormonal signalling (androgen, vasotocin, mesotocin) acting on distinct inhibitory neuron classes (parvalbumin, somatostatin) within the Social Decision-Making Network (SDMN). To test this, I will use immediate early gene expression, receptor and cell-type analyses (qPCR, in situ hybridisation, immunohistochemistry), and causal manipulations with viral silencing. Together, these approaches will reveal how hormones, neurons, and circuits interact to produce divergent social strategies.
This integrative design will advance knowledge on the evolutionary flexibility of conserved brain systems and establish birds as robust models for comparative neuroethology. The fellowship will provide advanced training in molecular and neurogenetic methods, project leadership, and interdisciplinary networking, complementing my expertise in behavioural ecology and supporting my transition to an independent career at the interface of ecology, neuroscience, and evolution.
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 neurobiology
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- natural sciences biological sciences biological behavioural sciences behavioural ecology
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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)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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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.
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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.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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38122 Trento
Italy
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