Laboratory for population ecology

The History of the Lab

History of the Lab starts in 1989, when, initiated by the Director of the Severtsov Institute of Problems of Ecology and Evolution, the Member of Russian Academy of Sciences Professor V. Ye. Sokolov, a group of tropical population ecology was organized by Professor Svetlana Shilova. In 1992 it was named a Group of Population Ecology, and in 2006 got a status of Laboratory. S. Shilova, also called “Chef” by her staff, brought together in the Lab her students and other zoologists interested in various aspects of population, behavioral, physiological and community ecology. The variety of scientific interests of the Lab members shaped the diversity of research topics and model objects (mainly small mammals and birds) and wide geography of field work.

In 2009, Andrey Tchabovsky became the Head of the Lab. Traditional research directions are in progress and have evolved to a new methodological and theoretical levels, opening new topics like the trade-offs between immunity and reproduction, the pace-of-life syndrome and animal personality, karyotypic variation, the mechanisms of meiosis and reproductive isolation, non-stationary dynamics of populations and communities, the physiology and ecology of movements, the colonization of new areas, etc. In our work, we combine the long-term (decades long) studies of wild populations (including the individual-based studies) with the field and laboratory experiments and instrumental methods.

Main Research Topics

Factors and mechanisms of population and community dynamics

(A.V. Tchabovsky, B.I. Sheftel, O.V. Bourski, Ye.N. Surkova, N.A. Schipanov, A.A. Kalinin, L.Ye. Savinetskaya, D.Yu. Alexandrov, O.N. Batova, N.I. Markov, V.D. Yakushov, I.S. Khropov)

Ecological, population, cytogenetic, and molecular mechanisms of intraspecific variation and divergence

(N.A. Shchipanov, S.V. Pavlova, B.I. Sheftel, A.A. Kalinin, D.Y. Alexandrov, N.I. Markov)

Trade-offs in the life-history and reproductive strategies: physiological and behavioral mechanisms and ecological drivers

(K.A. Rogovin, N.A. Vasilieva, O.V. Bourski, O.N. Batova, A.V. Tchabovsky, O.N. Shekarova, L.Y. Savinetskaya)

Animal personality

(N.A. Vasilieva, A.V. Tchabovsky, Ye.N. Surkova, L.Ye. Savinetskaya, I.S. Khropov)

Ecological aspect of the evolution of the parasitic systems

(V. V. Suntsov, Y. N. Surkova)