MGSE - Marion Varga

Department of Behavioural Biology
Institute for Neuro- and Behavioural Biology
Badestr. 9, 48149 Münster
D-48149 Münster, Germany

Phone: +49 251 83-21648
marion.varga@uni-muenster.de

Nationality: Austrian

Education

Since 2024:
PhD studies in the Department of Behavioural Biology, Institute for Neuro- and Behavioural Biology, University of Münster, Germany
2018 - 2023:
Master’s degree program “Behaviour, Neurobiology and Cognition”, University of Vienna, Austria
2020: Erasmus semester, School of Psychology, University of Padua, Italy
2014- 2018
Bachelor’s degree program Biology (specialization Ecology), University of Vienna, Austria

Work experience

2023: Field Research Assistant, Crow Cognition Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
2018: Research Internship, Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Austria
2019 & 2015: Archelon Volunteer, The Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece
2018 & 2016: Morigenos Volunteer, Slovenian Marine Mammal Society

Supervisors

Research interests

Behavioural Ecology
Animal Personality
Animal Cognition
Biodiversity

PhD project description

Patterns, determinants, and ecological consequences of individualized landscapes of fear

The trade-off between foraging and the likelihood of being eaten is one of the most fundamental problems governing animal behaviour because almost all non-human animals are involved in predator-prey interactions. Wrong assessment of predation risk - the likelihood of a predator attack - can have fatal consequences for individual fitness. In fact, the mere presence of a predator leads to indirect predation effects such as changes in prey morphology, physiology, life-history, and behaviour and acts both over long evolutionary as well as over short ecological time scales. These indirect effects rely on perceived predation risk which varies in space and time creating a landscape of fear defined as the variation of perception and response to predation risk in a heterogenous landscape. Traditionally, ecological research has focused on population-level responses to predation risk, often overlooking variability among individuals within a population. However, recent advancements in behavioural sciences highlight the importance of understanding individuality, e.g. in activity patterns, habitat use, foraging and decision-taking behaviour. Such among-conspecific variation is shaped by a multitude of factors, including intrinsic traits as personality, experience, and genetic predispositions, as well as extrinsic factors such as resource availability, habitat structure, and predator abundance. The spatial and temporal distribution of perceived predation risk differing consistently among individuals of a population affects intraspecific competition via niche complementarity and has consequences for population dynamics.
Small ground-dwelling rodents represent classical study systems for predator-prey interactions as they face substantial predation pressure. In this project I will focus on two vole species, the bank vole (Myodes glareolus) and the common vole (Microtus arvalis). First, I want to find out whether and how individuals mitigate the costs of fear by testing individual (co)variation between risk-taking during foraging activity and metabolism during resting (measured via respirometry). Individuals might compensate reduced foraging activity under increased predation risk by reducing their resting metabolic rates, especially risk-averse shy individuals. Second, I aim to illuminate among-individual variation in fear by non-invasive real-time measurements of stress responses during foraging related to variation along the proactive-reactive personality continuum. For this I want to combine monitoring of foraging behaviour in an artificial resource landscape with measures of body surface temperature via high-resolution thermal infrared imaging (thermography) to simultaneously assess perception of predation risk, behavioural and physiological responses. Third, I want to experimentally examine the ecological consequences of among-individual variation in landscapes of fear and test the effects on biodiversity at the resource level. Specifically, I want to examine cascading top-down effects of among-individual variation in foraging under risk in local, landscape and regional biodiversity of resources via measuring the diversity at giving-up density (DivGUD). Investigating how individuals perceive, respond to, and mitigate the costs of fear during foraging and its ecological consequences will provide valuable insights into the mechanisms driving phenotypic plasticity, behavioural syndromes, and eco-evolutionary dynamics within and across species.

Publications

Wagner, B., Šlipogor, V., Oh, J., Varga, M., & Hoeschele, M. (2023). A comparison between common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) and human infants sheds light on traits proposed to be at the root of human octave equivalence. Developmental Science, e13395. doi: 10.1111/desc.13395