Dr. Christina Bauch

Welcome to Christina Bauch's website!

Species, populations as well as individuals within populations differ in ageing rates, lifespan and other fitness-related characteristics, which consequently affects ecological and evolutionary dynamics. My research aims to understand what causes these differences. I use correlational and experimental approaches to study life-history trade-offs and candidate proximate mechanisms (with a focus on telomere biology), epigenetic and genetic inheritance (quantitative genetics) and environmental influences (resource availability, pollution exposure) in wild populations..

Have a look at my website and if you have questions or if you are interested in a collaboration, please contact me using the information below.

Contact

Christina Bauch

Behavioural & Physiological Ecology Group

Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences

University of Groningen

e-mail: christinabauch (at) gmx (dot) de

twitter: christina_bauch

google scholar profile

researchgate profile

News & Events

October 2023: New publication from the jackdaw project with Elisa P. Badas et al. in Molecular Ecology: Ectoparasite presence and brood size manipulation interact to accelerate telomere shortening in nestling jackdaws (link to pdf)

We evaluated the effects of manipulated brood size and natural infestation by the carnid fly Carnus hemapterus on nestling growth and telomere shortening of wild jackdaws. In enlarged broods, nestlings’ telomeres shortened more when parasitized, while in reduced broods there was no effect of infestation on telomere shortening. We conclude that there is a synergistic effect of number of siblings and Carnus infestation on telomere shortening rate: blood-sucking parasites may negatively impact telomeres by increasing cell proliferation and/or physiological stress, and coping with infestation may be less successful in enlarged broods with increased sibling competition and lower per capita feeding rate.

January 2023: New publication from the jackdaw project: Egg size effects on nestling mass in jackdaws Corvus monedula: a cross-foster experiment (link to pdf)

With our statistical approach we conclude that 92% of the slope of the association between egg size and nestling mass can be attributed to a direct effect of egg size. The remaining 8% can be attributed to aspects of parental chick rearing ability as reflected in egg size, but this component did not deviate significantly from zero.

29th/30th September 2022 - As the EOU conference in Gießen in 2022 had been cancelled and with it our symposium "Understanding mechanisms underlying life-history trade-offs and variation in senescence patterns", we organised a scientific meeting on this topic at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, in Madrid, Spain.

A joint project by Blanca Jimeno (University of Castilla La Mancha), Elisa P. Badas (Complutense University of Madrid) and myself. We received funding to organize this meeting from the Company of Biologists and the SEB. Meeting location, technical facilities and support were provided by the National Museum of Natural Sciences.

May 2022 - Manuscript accepted in Science of the Total Environment (link to pdf)

We measured feather mercury concentration in Cory's Shearwaters Calonectris borealis, long-lived seabirds and top predators, between 9 and 35 years of age and related it to telomere length in erythrocytes. Cory's Shearwaters with higher mercury concentrations had shorter telomeres and the effect was sex-dependent, reaching significance in males only. This may be explained by the fact that males have longer telomeres and higher and more variable mercury concentrations than females in this population. The mercury effect on telomere length was stronger on longer telomeres in the genome within individuals. We discuss the hypotheses that the negative correlation could either be a direct effect of mercury on telomere shortening and/or a consequence of variation in phenotypic quality among individuals that results in a covariation between mercury contamination and telomere length.

September 2021 - Paper accepted in Molecular Ecology (link to pdf):

Our long-term study on wild jackdaws reveals a high heritability of telomere length and low heritability of telomere shortening. To keep confounding effects minimal, we measured telomere length at the same age and telomere shortening at the same age/time interval for all individuals. To disentangle genetic and environmental effects we used experimental cross-fostering and quantitative genetic animal model statistics that uses pedigree information. We measured telomere length early and late in the nestling phase, when telomere shortening is generally highest. Telomeres shortened significantly and were highly phenotypically and genetically correlated within individuals. Our finding that variation in telomere length and telomere shortening are primarily driven by additive genetic versus environmental effects, respectively, suggests these traits differ in their potential as fitness biomarker, and also in the mechanism through which this potential arises. Despite high heritability of telomere length, evolvability is likely to be slow.

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