Selected research activities

During 2019 and 2020, my effort focalized exclusively on the laboratory work of a joint interdisciplinary project co-financed with the research team from Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna. (Austria). This project started in 2014 as a pioneering long-term labeling experiment with fast growing small mammals (Lepus europaeus) and slow growing large mammals (Cervus elaphus). It is for the first time that by labeling, absolute time of tissue deposition is calibrated with LH events (birth, weaning, age at first reproduction, body mass, growth rate), ecological variables (seasonal tº and food intake), physiology (BMR, rumen tº, heart rate) and hormone levels (IGF1). Experiments are designed by me and conducted in collaboration with the Dep. of Interdisciplinary Life Sciences at Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (FIWI). This project received additional funding from FIWI. The results from our current experiments are expected to be of general applicability to the interpretation of LHs, and physiological and hormonal fluctuations in extant and fossil mammals and by extension to other determinate growers (dinosaurs and birds).

The long-term experimental project has a specific schedule and a clear timing framework that forced me to initially and after having prepared bone and dental material to devote my complete time to lab work (analyses and comparisons by microscopy). For these reasons, we have dedicated the last two years to finish the data-acquisition and processing of the experimental phase and the histological analysis of this project. Several publications are in preparation and partially submitted.