list of Publications
Striped mice
Social and physiological flexibility in an extreme environment
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bush karoo rats
Costs and benefits of solitary living, an adaptive strategy to cope with a harsh environment.
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Comparative Studies
Phylogenetically corrected comparative studies.
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reviews and society
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Our long-term field studies on striped mice (left) indicated the significance of a species ability to change its social organisation. To understand how IVSO (intra-specific variation in social organisation) influences our understanding of mammalian social evolution, we then initiated comparative studies, establishing a high quality of mammalian social systems, taking for the first time IVSO into account. This database indicates that solitary living is not be the ancestral state of mammals. Instead, solitary living might be a derived state in mammals, an adaptation to special environmental conditions. This lead to the initiation of a new long-term project, where we study costs and benefits of solitary living in bush Karoo rats. Knowledge created in all three projects of fundamental research has then been used to inform applied projects (invasive species; evolutionary medicine) and to transfer knowledge to the society (Corona and cooperation)..