Dr. Rebecca Rimbach

rrimbach@uni-muenster.de

Tel: (+49)-(0)251-83-21268

Badestraße 9

Raum 9

My research is primarily focused on ecophysiology, behavioral ecology and endocrinology. Each individual is unique in the way it interacts with and responds to changes in its environment, and I aim to understand if individualized physiological phenotypes occur, how they adapt to natural and anthropogenic changes in their environment and how inter-individual variation in physiological and behavioral traits influences individual health, survival and fitness. I combine an ecophysiology approach with experimental and observational data, and with state-of-the-art technology. My work to date has covered a range of species and environments, including tropical rainforests, semi-deserts and cities. For my PhD, I studied the behavioral and endocrine responses of two primate species to anthropogenic disturbances related to habitat fragmentation in Colombia. During my postdoctoral positions at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), I combined measurements of resting metabolic rate, daily energy expenditure (using the doubly labeled water method), behavioral observations and endocrine measures to tease apart how African striped mice regulate their energy expenditure in response to drastic environmental variation occurring in their semi-desert habitat. Moreover, I examined which environmental factors drive changes in their resting metabolic rate and assessed whether inter-individual variation in body composition influences the probability of survival throughout the long and harsh dry season. At Duke University (USA), I investigated the effects of urbanization and anthropogenic food waste consumption on the physiology and health in a common urban mammal, the eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), and how changes in physical activity level affect energy expenditure and cardiometabolic health in two lemur species (Propithecus coquereli and Lemur catta) at the Duke Lemur Center.

In my upcoming projects, I plan to untangle how constraints imposed by the environment and human-induced rapid environmental changes (such as urbanization) together with among-individual variation in behavior, physiology and health shape life-history characteristics and ultimately fitness and survival. I will examine a suite of phenotypic traits along an urbanization gradient to provide insights into how physiological systems and covariation between phenotypic traits change in response to urbanization. I will conduct common garden and breeding experiments to assess the underlying mechanistic links between phenotypic traits and urbanization, and to disentangle whether behavioral and physiological responses to urbanization are driven by (non-genetic) plasticity or evolutionary change.