Researcher

Raoul Van Damme

Research Expertise:The study of adaptation of 'complex' systems in animals, specifically reptiles and amphibians. 'Complex' should be read as: consisting of several bodily parts, employed to perform several tasks, and likely contributing to the survival/reproduction. Examples of functions studied include thermoregullation, chemoreception, locomotion, feeding, cognition. Study of the relationships between (1)morphological/physiological variation; (2)variation in performance (e.g. speed, power, cognition) and (3)survival and reproduction. Analyses are perfromed at the individual, the population and the species level (in the latter case: using phylogenetically informed statistics).

Keywords:CHEMICAL ECOLOGY, PHYLOGENETICS, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, ADAPTATION, THERMAL ECOLOGY, Biology

Disciplines:Animal biology, Bioinformatics and computational biology, Ecology, Evolutionary biology, General biology, Genetics, Microbiology, Molecular and cell biology, Plant biology, Systems biology, Other biological sciences, Other natural sciences

Research techniques:Morphometrics, performance measurements, behavioural observations, paternity analyses, survival analyses, phylogenetical comparative method, thermal analyses