Dr. Lucía Mentesana

Variation in environmental factors is particularly important for natural populations since it can have both direct and indirect (i.e., through maternal effects) impacts on individuals, thus affecting their fitness. I am interested in understanding how individuals cope with environmental changes by studying the interaction of glucocorticoids, oxidative stress and telomere dynamics in a wild population of great tits (Parus major). I use both observational and experimental methods to determine how environmental conditions affect the mother’s physiology, and how this condition affect offspring phenotype.