Tchabovsky Andrey

D.Sc., Head of the Lab,
Principal Investigator

Research interests:

My current research interests focus on the process of colonization of new areas by animals. Research in this rapidly growing interdisciplinary field tends to take a historical approach, examining colonization and its consequences from a historical perspective. We, on the other hand, currently observe the colonization process in real time, studying the population expansion of the midday gerbils, which are now actively expanding their range in Kalmykia due to a new cycle of desertification. In our project, we aim to answer the main question: Whether the colonists differ from the inhabitants of the maternal population, and if they do, in what way?

My project “The colonists: what are they?” continues my earlier (more than 30-year-long) research of populations and communities of rodents in grazing ecosystems of Kalmykia, initiated by S. A. Shilova in 1993. Since 1993, I have conducted these studies in the Laboratory of Landscape Ecology of Mammals, IEE RAS, and since 2003, in the Laboratory of Population Ecology. We described and explained abrupt step-like shifts between stationary regimes in rodents’ population dynamics resulting from variation in livestock population grazing impact.

In parallel, I participated (first as a supervisor together with S. A. Shilova, and later as a researcher) in a long-term study of behavior and life cycles of the yellow ground squirrel – one of the most unusual hibernators among terrestrial Sciurids. By observing the individual life histories of squirrels from first emergence from the nest to death, we described the specific patterns of development, life-history and reproductive strategies, mating system and sexual conflict directly related to the unusually fast pace of life of this large hibernating rodent.

Ground squirrels were also the model system in my population genetic research (2007-2012). We collected data from vast territories in Southern Siberia (Tyva, Buryatia, Mongolia, Baikal region) to study phylogeography and genetic structure of the populations of long-tailed ground squirrels with varying degrees of spatial isolation.

My entire life in science is linked to open landscapes and open-dwelling gerbils and ground squirrels. This is presented in my D.Sc. Thesis “Ecological aspects of evolution of sociality in rodents inhabiting open landscapes” (2006, IEE RAS). In this work, I have compiled my research on sociality – the topic, from which my academic work began under the supervision of S. V. Popov, S. A. Shilova, and M. E. Goltzman after graduating from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University in 1984. A comparative analysis of sociality in gerbils (this is the title of my PhD Thesis, defended in 1993, IEE RAS) was the main topic of my research; first, in the N.F. Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology and then (since 1993) in IEE RAS. A significant contribution to this research came from my collaboration with Ben Gurion University (Israel), 1999–2003. As a result, we proposed ecologically sound hypotheses to explain social divergence in closely related and ecologically similar rodent species.