Broggi Obiols Juli

Investigación

My main research line is focused on the ecophysiological and ecomorphological adaptations that allow passerines to withstand winter/summer extreme conditions. I have combined different approaches ranging from correlational and experimental work on wild populations to laboratory experiments with captive wild and domestic animals. I focus on the adaptive significance of winter BMR variation and the ways to preserves and absorve energy form the environment through radiation in wild great tit populations accross Europe. I am interested in the specific relation between BMR and body condition, and set up a new theoretical framework to study energy management in the context of a starvation –predation trade-off, moving the focus from “the optimal body mass theory”, to a new perspective in where costs of maintenance are simultaneously regulated. Lately, I focused on the effects of food supplementary feeding on wild birds, and the implications of winter energy management policies and their potential carry-over effects over subsequent life-history episodes. I am specifically interested in the mechanistic proceeses that underly such carry over effects.

Another line of research deals with maternal transfer of antibodies, and to a wider extent on transgenerational effects on immunity and metabolism. I have been studying the influence of maternal effects in the inheritance of immune response in wild house sparrows, and the potential implications for the concept of “social immunity”.