We investigate life history- and reproductive strategies.

Sex, age at maturity, litter size, offspring size at birth and length of reproductive cycles count among important life history features. Reproduction represents one of the most important aspects in the life history of an individual and parental care represents one important component of fitness. One focus of our investigations concerns allocation decisions and trade-offs in parental care. As parental care is a valuable and limited resource, conflict about parental care is expected.
Our investigations are carried out using guinea pigs, cavies and sea lions.

We focus on:
- Allocation decisions
- costs of reproduction and brood care
- parent-offspring conflicts
- social influences on age at maturity
- advantages and disadvantages of precociality
- reproductive strategies of males and females
- effects of an unpredictable environment (global warming) on population dynamics