Department teams Department news Department publications Members of department Animals use their chemical senses – olfaction and taste – to interpret their environment and to adapt to new ecological niches. Insects appear as ideal models to decipher the molecular and neurobiological bases of these chemical senses and to investigate their importance at the individual and […]
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Department teams Department news Department publications Members of department The three research teams of the Department of Evolutionary ecology study the ecological and evolutionary causes and consequences of individual phenotypic variability. Studies focus on behaviour, physiology, morphology, and life history traits. The teams undertake experimental and theoretical studies using a variety of animal models (birds, […]
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In this prospective article, an international consortium coordinated by researchers from the University of Copenhagen examines the prospects for using the “third dimension” of agricultural land, i.e. the possibility, without resorting to new land, of increasing the volume of soil exploited by the root system of crops, thereby increasing the resource base available for agricultural production while minimizing the undesirable externalities frequently associated with current agroecosystems.
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City life could lead to differential evolution between urban and forest populations. Aurelie Khimoun and her collaborators showed, in their article published in Biology Letters, that urban populations of the tiny acorn ant are surprisingly not genetically differentiated from forest populations, suggesting expansion and lack of isolation. However, some genes display traces of selection that point towards an adaptation to the urban environment.
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Obama nungara is a species of land flatworm originating from South America; the species was recently described and distinguished from a similar species, Obama marmorata. Obama nungara has invaded several countries of Europe, but the extent of the invasion has not been thoroughly mapped.
For more than 10 years, the City of Paris and the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Sciences of Paris have been collaborating on various issues of urban ecology. From these multiform collaborations at the interface between fundamental research and concrete techniques for the management of urban environments, several advances have been made on both scientific […]