Barbara Class

Barbara Class

Post-doctoral researcher

CEFE, Montpellier, France

About me

I am a post-doctoral researcher interested in animal behavior and its evolution in the wild. Using long term data collected in wild vertebrate populations (birds, lizards) and a variety of mixed (quantitative genetic) models, I have been studying:

  • consistent among-individual differences in behavior (i.e. ‘animal personality’), their potential responses to selection, and how they change over time as individuals develop and age;
  • sexual selection, in particular the processes leading to assortative mating;
  • Mixed models' performances when applied to the study of individual differences in plasticity and phenotypic similarity between individuals

For my current postdoc at the CEFE, I am investigating whether urban (Montpellier) and non-urban (Rouvière) great tit populations differ in their quantitative genetic variation for an array of traits and therefore in their potential to respond to selection in these two different habitats.

Interests

  • Animal personality
  • Sexual selection
  • Quantitative genetics
  • Urban evolutionary ecology
  • Mixed models
  • Social behaviour
  • Disease ecology

Education

  • PhD in Biology, 2017

    University of Turku (Finland)

  • MSc in Ecophysiology and Ethology, 2013

    University of Strasbourg (France)

  • BSc in Biology, 2011

    University of Strasbourg (France)

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Post-doctoral Researcher

CEFE, Montpellier

Feb 2022 – Present Montpellier, France
Quantitative genetic variation in urban great tits (Anne Charmantier lab)
 
 
 
 
 

Post-doctoral Researcher

University of the Sunshine Coast

Mar 2020 – Nov 2021 QLD, Australia
Social behaviour and disease ecology in Eastern water dragons (Celine Frere lab)
 
 
 
 
 

Post-doctoral Researcher

University of Turku

Nov 2017 – Aug 2019 Finland
Evolutionary quantitative genetics in wild birds (Jon Brommer lab)
 
 
 
 
 

Ph.D. student

University of Turku

Dec 2013 – Oct 2017 Finland
Evolutionary quantitative genetics of animal personality in the wild (Jon Brommer lab)

Publications

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(2022). A variance partitioning perspective of assortative mating: Proximate mechanisms and evolutionary implications. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 35(4) 483-490.

PDF Project DOI

(2021). The epidemiology and genomics of a virulent emerging fungal pathogen in an Australian reptile.

Project Biorxiv

(2021). Estimating the long-term repeatability of food-hoarding behaviours in an avian predator. Biology Letters, 17 20210286.

PDF Dataset DOI

(2020). Nonrandom Mating for Behavior in the Wild?. Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

PDF DOI

(2020). Collision between biological process and statistical analysis revealed by mean centring. Journal of Animal Ecology, 89(12) 2813-2824.

PDF DOI

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