1. Reduction of phenotypic plasticity in behaviour by early experience: functional consequences of an adaptive mechanism? 2. Paternity Plattform 3. Endocrinology Plattform

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Central project: The central project serves to coordinate the PhD program within the Research Unit, organize travel among groups, seminar series, master classes, a yearly retreat, method courses and a workshop. It eases and stimulates interaction among groups by allowing students to spend some time in another laboratory of the group for joint experiments and method transfer. International visibility of the research through presentations at conferences will also be organized through the central project. In addition, this project comprises two method platforms, genetic paternity determination, in Bielefeld and Endocrinological analysis in Münster. To insure data safety and comparability among groups a central relational data base will be set up and used by all groups.Paternity Platform: The genetics Iaboratory at the chair of Behavioural Biology, University of Bielefeld, will determine paternities based on 10-20 polymorphic microsatellites for the groups working with guinea pigs, cavies, field voles and zebra finches. The respective microsatellites are established in our lab.Endocrinology Platform: In our Endocrinology Iaboratory at the University of Münster, we routinely determine plasma concentrations of different hormones by radioimmunoassay and competitive enzymimmunoassays (EIA). We will determine plasma concentrations of Cortisol, testosterone and progesterone in guinea pigs, wild cavies and zebra finches for different projects of our research group. Furthermore, we will determine concentrations of corticosterone and testosterone metabolites in the faeces of wild cavies, laboratory mice and field voles in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Rupert Palme, Institute for Biochemistry, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna.