
Linus GüntherMuseum für Naturkunde - Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity | MFN
Linus Günther
Dr. rer. nat.
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18
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Publications (18)
Exceptionally long-lived species, including many bats, rarely show overt signs of aging, making it difficult to determine why species differ in lifespan. Here, we use DNA methylation (DNAm) profiles from 712 known-age bats, representing 26 species, to identify epigenetic changes associated with age and longevity. We demonstrate that DNAm accurately...
Bats hold considerable potential for understanding exceptional longevity because some species can live eight times longer than other mammals of similar size [1]. Estimating their age or longevity is difficult because they show few signs of aging. DNA methylation (DNAm) provides a potential solution given its utility for estimating age [2-4] and lif...
Female bats of temperate zones often communally rear their young, which creates ideal conditions for naive juveniles to find or learn about resources via informed adults. However, studying social information transfer in elusive and small-bodied animals in the wild is difficult with traditional tracking techniques. We used a novel 'next-generation'...
Among mammals, bats exhibit extreme variation in sociality, with some species living largely solitary lives while others form
colonies of more than a million individuals. Some tropical species form groups during the day that persist throughout the year
while many temperate species only gather into groups during hibernation or parturition. How group...
Among mammals, bats exhibit extreme variation in sociality, with some species living largely solitary lives while others form colonies of more than a million individuals. Some tropical species form groups during the day that persist throughout the year while many temperate species only gather into groups during hibernation or parturition. How group...
The spatiotemporal distribution of females is a major factor affecting animal social systems. Predation risk and the distribution of feeding resources often determine where females are found, but abiotic factors (e.g., temperature) can also shape the distribution of females and therefore variation in social organization and mating systems. Given th...
Bats are a highly gregarious taxon suggesting that social information should be readily available for making decision. Social information transfer in maternity colonies might be a particularly efficient mechanism for naïve pups to acquire information on resources from informed adults. However, such behaviour is difficult to study in the wild, in pa...
While inbreeding avoidance is widely accepted as the major driver of female natal dispersal, the evolution of male philopatry is still poorly understood and discussed to be driven by male mating strategy, mate competition among male kin and kin cooperation. During a twelve-year study, we gathered detailed genetic and observational data of individua...
With their extraordinary species richness and diversity in ecological traits and social systems, bats are a promising taxon for testing socio-ecological hypotheses in order to get new insights into the evolution of animal social systems. Regarding its roosting habits, proboscis bats form an extreme by occupying sites which are usually completely ex...
Table S1 Results from allele frequency calculations with CERVUS v. 3.0 (Kalinovski et al. 2007). Figure S2 Sketch of the main hypothesis regarding the differences in social dispersion in the roost between day and night. We assume that the clumped roosting of mixed sex groups during the day is a derived trait and the result of selection for cryptic...
Table S1 Results from allele frequency calculations with CERVUS v. 3.0 (Kalinovski et al. 2007). Figure S2 Sketch of the main hypothesis regarding the differences in social dispersion in the roost between day and night. We assume that the clumped roosting of mixed sex groups during the day is a derived trait and the result of selection for cryptic...
Recent evidence suggests that tropical bats may frequently depart from the predominant mammalian malebiased dispersal pattern. So far, two emballonurid bat species that are closely related to our study species (Grey sac-winged bat, Balantiopteryx plicata) have been found to exhibit exceptional female-biased dispersal that is in accordance with fath...
The ultimate causes for predominant male-biased dispersal (MBD) in mammals and female-biased dispersal (FBD) in birds are still subject to much debate. Studying exceptions to general patterns of dispersal, for example, FBD in mammals, provides a valuable opportunity to test the validity of proposed evolutionary pressures. We used long-term behaviou...