Research lines & key words

Juan Carlos Alonso, Research Professor, CSIC

Behavioural Ecology

· gregarious behaviour in birds (adaptive value of flocking during foraging)

· optimal vs equilibrium flock size

· ideal free distribution vs phenotype-limited distribution

· intraspecific aggression, cleptoparasitism

· flocking vs territorial behaviour

· central place foraging strategies

· risk-sensitive foraging

· dispersal in relation to abundance and distribution of resources (carrying capacity, patch use strategies)

· dispersal ecology (juvenile, natal and breeding dispersal)

· parent-offspring conflict

· costs of parental care in relation to offspring sex

· reproductive strategies and dispersal

· relationships between parental care, phenotypic quality and juvenile dispersal

· evolution of lekking in birds

· breeding systems and genetic structure of metapopulations

· sexual selection: behavioural and ecological adaptations of extreme sexual size dimorphism, evolution of sex ratio, sexual segregation

Conservation Biology

· demography, population dynamics (productivity, mortality, sex bias, population viability analysis), population fragmentation

· habitat selection and patterns of space use in farmland habitats

· genetic structure of metapopulations, landscape genetics

· dispersal and migration in human-altered environments

· farmland bird ecology, influence of farming intensification on the behaviour and distribution of birds, bird responses to anthropogenic landscape modification

· bird mortality at power lines