Abgrenzung der Eigenleistung
The ideas presented in this thesis were formed by me, and extensively discussed with my supervisors Anne Peters and Michelle Hall. All research chapters, as well as ‘general parts’ in this thesis were written by me, and commented on by co-authors. I performed all statistical analyses myself.
I performed field-work and supervised field-assistants for three periods of three months in Australia between 2007 and 2010 (and a 3 month period as field-assistant in 2006). Year-round fieldwork was carried out by Michelle Hall and several field-assistants.
Molecular work involved several steps. DNA was extracted from blood samples (by Michelle Hall, Evi Fricke, and me), and sent to Germany where molecular sexing of all individuals was conducted by Evi Fricke. I optimised the PCR methods for genotyping, under supervision of Gernot Segelbacher.
Further genotyping was done by Ecogenics GmbH. I conducted all the parentage analyses and further analyses using these samples.
Acknowledgements
Undertaking this research has been a fantastic experience. Many people were crucially important for my research, and I would like to thank everybody who contributed to the realisation of this thesis.
First, and foremost, I am extremely grateful to my supervisors Anne Peters and Michelle Hall from whom I have learned an incredible amount. I am very grateful for their support and input, and the freedom to pursue my interests (especially because some of those must have demanded quite a bit of patience and imagination). Their sharp (and fast) comments and thoughts on ideas, proposals, preliminary graphs, and manuscripts have contributed much to this thesis, and to my current way of conducting science.
Anne has been a great motivator, and with unrestricted dedication she has taught me how to do (and write) to-the-point science. Also, ‘behind the scenes’
Anne has always been there, which made my stay in Radolfzell very nice (not in the last place the traditional pizza evenings with Kaspar, Janneke and Joaquin, which and whom I will miss).
This study would not have been possible without Michelle’s dedication in year-round field-work, guidance of the field-assistants, and keeping an amazing overview on what was going on in our population of fairy-wrens.
Michelle is a great example for me of ‘how-to-do-fieldwork’, and has from a distance greatly supervised in conceiving ideas and in writing. Additionally, I am grateful to Michelle for saving my life on my first day in Australia ☺.
Kaspar Delhey was always there for discussion and I greatly appreciate Kaspar’s encouraging comments. The discussions about statistics have formed my feeling that these are often (not always) an interesting puzzle rather than the ‘necessary-evil-for-a-field-biologist’.
Several people have assisted me in learning and conducting lab-work. Gernot Segelbacher generously taught me the ins-and-outs of genotyping in his lab in Freiburg. Steve Murphy assisted in the lab in Mornington. Evi Fricke has been of invaluable help for all sorts of molecular (and other) work; not in the
last place conducting the molecular sexing of 779 birds. Additionally, I thank Bernhard Koller from Ecogenics for understanding my requests (and acting accordingly) to do the genotyping ‘right-now’.
A great number of field-assistants made detailed knowledge possible about our population of birds and I am extremely grateful for their hard and accurate work in the field! A special thanks goes also to the M.Sc. students Joppe Rijpstra and Rinskje Klooster, who did their research project on the purple-crowned fairy-wrens and with whom I had a great time in the field and in Radolfzell.
Having had the opportunity to conduct research in Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary has been a great privilege. I thank the Australian Wildlife Conservancy for providing this opportunity, and the ‘resident’ crew in Mornington for making my time there real fun: Anja, Butch, Doug, Grassy Graham, Jo, Jojo, Julie, KD, Lyn, Malcolm, Michelle, Olya, Richie, Sara, Steve, Swanie, and everbody else. Cheers mates!
I am also grateful to many colleagues (PhD’s and scientists in Radolfzell, Seewiesen, Mornington and at the ‘Malurus-meeting’ in Canberra) and everyone else, who collaborated on this research, and/or provided useful discussion or comments on my manuscripts (and for accepting my Frisian
‘honest opinion’). Among others those were Adam Fudickar, Alex Baugh, Andrew Cockburn, Anja Matuszak, Anja Skroblin, Barbara Helm, Bart Kempenaers, Bart Kranstauber, Ben Hatchwell, Bernd Leisler, Catarina Miranda, David Santos, Dina Dechman, Elena Arriero, Günther Bauer, Isabel Smallegange, Jesko Partecke, Kamran Safi, Kaspar Delhey, Mark Roberts, Martin Wikelski, Michaela Hau, Mike Webster, Ralf Kurvers, Riek van Noordwijk, Rob Magrath, Sigal Liberman, Tim Greives, Tim Birkhead, Volker Salewski, Wolfgang Fiedler, Willow Lindsay, (etc, etc).
I thank Barbara Helm for kindly translating the summary of this thesis in German.
Several researchers have given me insight in unpublished data of their study and other information for my comparative work (Amotz Zahavi, Jordan Karubian, Mike Webster, Peter Dunn, Rita Covas, Rob Heinsohn), rainfall data in Mornington (Jo Heathcote) and the fairy-wren phylogeny (Janet Gardner), for which I am most grateful.
In the Vogelwarte, Bernhard, Claudia, Evi, Gerlinde, Kumar, Rolf, Uli, Uschi, and many others have provided generous help in numerous ways
throughout the years, and my life would have been much more difficult without them.
Furthermore, I thank everyone (and those are really too many people to mention personally, but certainly not less important than everybody else) who made my stay in Germany lively and exciting. Among other things I really enjoyed the Rossittenstrasse BBQ’s, (international) diners, game nights, happy hours (keep going Tim), the movie night (happened to be my favourite movie), lakeside- and catchingstation-winedrinking (special mention of Volker is warranted here), and the English pub and English breakfasts (Jezz and Sinead).
Pictures in this thesis were taken in Mornington Wildlife Santuary by Michelle Hall (pages 21, 22, 49, 91, 117), Doug Adams (pages 71, 139), and Wayne Lawler (page 25).
A special ‘dankewol’ goes to my parents and my family, for their support, interest, and for forgiving me that I was away too often for too long.
I thank Sigal for her love, patience and faith in me, and for the great time together.
This research was funded by the ‘Minerva Sonderprogramm zur Förderung hervorragender Wissenschaftlerinnen’ of the Max Planck Society (awarded to Anne Peters).