| Location within campus: | Unidad de Morfología y Función (UMF) |
| Phone: | – |
| Head of Laboratory: | Dr. Roberto Edmundo Munguía Steyer Full Professor rmunguia.steyer@gmail.com |
| Research lines per researcher: | Evolutionary Ecology of Arthropods, Parental Care, Sexual Selection, Animal Demography, Ecophysiology |
Currently my students and I are investigating the following questions:
Evaluation of the costs and benefits of parental care from the behavioral, physiological and eco-immunological perspective.
Modulation of pre-zygotic (fertility) and post-zygotic (parental care) parental investment through experimental manipulation of juvenile hormone concentration.
Evaluating the interaction between sexual selection and parental care, do single parents pay a cost to care for their offspring or do they become more attractive to potential partners?
Estimation of paternity levels of Abedus breviceps, a belostomatid bug with exclusive paternal care.
Estimation of demographic parameters in animal populations in wildlife such as survival, distribution and population dynamics using occupation and capture-recapture models.
In my laboratory we use as model systems the giant water bugs (Hemiptera: Belostomatidae), odonata and lepidoptera, but we focus on answering questions of an ecological-evolutionary nature with the most suitable animal systems for this purpose.
Requena, G. S., Munguía-Steyer, R. & Machado, G. (2014). Paternal care and sexual selection in arthropods. In Macedo, R.H. & Machado G. (Eds.). In Sexual selection: Insights from the Neotropics. Elsevier, UK. pp 201-228. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-416028-6.00008-6
Munguía‐Steyer, R., González‐García, E., Castaños, C. E., & Córdoba‐Aguilar, A. (2019). Costly parenting: physiological condition over time and season in males of the giant waterbug Abedus dilatatus. Physiological Entomology, 44(3-4), 236-244. https://doi.org/10.1111/phen.12299
| Prospective Thesis Candidate Profile: | Characteristics of a potential applicant to join the laboratory: Knowledge, taste and solvency in the disciplines of evolutionary biology and ecology. Willingness to work as a team and participate in the weekly sessions that we have in the group to present the progress of the respective projects and to discuss scientific articles. Interest and willingness to take the elective course on behavioral ecology. Academic history with an average higher than 8.5. |
| Service Social Data: | – |