Christina Hansen Wheat FD
Contact
Name and title: Christina Hansen WheatFD
Workplace: Department of Zoology Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Room D 548Svante Arrheniusväg 18 B
Postal address Zoologiska institutionen106 91 Stockholm
About me
I am a behavioural ecologist studying how behaviour shapes the life of animals. My interests within animal behaviour are broad, spanning from applied to basic research, including questions on how individual phenotype affects fitness and group dynamics, to how behaviour develops and evolves over time.
To address my research questions I use a mix of approaches involving data collection either in situ or under controlled conditions. I prefer to combine various types of data to understand how behaviour for instance affects fitness-related traits, such as dispersal or reproductive success, or how behaviour and hormonal profiles interact.
As a PhD candidate at Stockholm University for the past five years, I have been investigating how domestication has affected behavioural development using wolves and dogs as model system.
Please see my personal homepage for current and previous research projects on wolves and dogs, leopards and swift foxes.
Domestication, a process in which species are selected to live in human-controlled environments, has dramatically impacted the evolutionary trajectories of numerous animal and plant species.
The domestic dog (Canis familiaris) is an excellent study species for asking questions about how domestication has affected behaviour. Domestication of the dog from the grey wolf (Canis lupus) occurred at least 15,000 years ago, making the dog the first domesticated species. Present day dogs live in vastly different environments than wolves, with various factors influencing behaviour on both individual and social scales, and wolf-dog comparisons therefore provide an ideal set-up to address questions on how domestication has affected behaviour.
To investigate how domestication has affected behavioural development, I have worked with juvenile wolves and dogs for the past five years of my PhD, hand-raising three litters of wolves and two litters of dogs under identical conditions. Specifically, we are trying to answer questions of how social behaviour develops over time, and how the development of social dynamics, individuality and hormonal profiles might interact. Data is collected using a mix of approaches such as behavioural observations, behavioural testing, social network analysis and cortisol assays based on fecal samples.
Forskningsprojekt