MARIA MOIRON - ABOUT ME

I am a research associate (group leader) in the Department of Evolutionary Biology at Bielefeld University (Germany). Prior to this, I was fortunate to work in various locations and collaborate with outstanding researchers.

Back in 2011, I did my Master's project at the Centre for Ecological Research and Applied Forestries (CREAF) in Barcelona (Spain) supervised by Daniel Sol. For my Master thesis I explored the link between urban tolerance and singing behaviour in birds. I made use of a phylogenetic comparative analysis to test (and provide no evidence for) the hypothesis that urban bird species present a higher pitch song that non-urban species.

Two years later, I moved from my natal Spain to Germany, where I did my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen under the supervision of Niels Dingemanse and Kimberley Mathot (now based at the University of Alberta). There I investigated why individuals within single populations often differ in their average behaviour (“animal personality”). For that, I carried out a series of experiments in the field and lab using great tits (Parus major) as animal model.

After my PhD, I moved to Montpellier (France) for my first postdoc at the Centre of Evolutionary and Functional Ecology (CEFE-CNRS). The project was together with Anne Charmantier and Sandra Bouwhuis. The main focus of my first postdoc was on the evolutionary genetics of plasticity, where I investigated how genetic variation in plasticity was shaped by internal factors, such as age, and external factors, such as temperature in wintering grounds and food availability in breeding grounds, making use of data from the Banter See population of common terns.

At the end of 2020, I moved back to Germany for a second postdoc at the Institute of Avian Research in Wilhelmshaven (Germany) together with Sandra Bouwhuis. In this second postdoc I investigated eco-evolutionary dynamics in the wild. More specifically, I studied the effects of rapidly changing environmental conditions on micro-evolution and population dynamics in a natural population of common terns (Sterna hirundo) located at the Banter See (Germany).

In the spring of 2023 I started a new job as Research associate (group leader) at Bielefeld University, and this is the position that I hold at the moment. Click here for a more detailed version of my CV.