Meinolf Ottensmann

Bielefeld University · Animal Behaviour

1.Parasites stimulate and reinforce diverse defence mechanisms in their hosts. Defence components may contribute to resistance, i.e., the suppression of parasites, and to tolerance i.e., the capacity to limit the costs caused by parasites. An emergent and particularly challenging task of eco-immunology is to differentiate defence types and to recog...

Leucocytozoonosis is a vector-borne infection of birds, caused by members of the haemosporidian genus Leucocytozoon. The clinical presentation may range from asymptomatic to severe disease. Consequences of Leucocytozoon infection on blood profiles remain to be described, especially for different host species in the wild. In the current study, the p...

A deeper understanding of the processes underlying the distribution of animals in space is crucial for both basic and applied ecology. The Common buzzard (Buteo buteo) is a highly aggressive, territorial bird of prey that interacts strongly with its intra- and interspecific competitors. We propose and use random matrix theory to quantify the streng...

The nearest and next-to-nearest neighbour spacings between buzzard nests in the Teutoburger Wald around Bielefeld, as gathered in the years 2000--2019, are compared with Ginibre random matrix ensembles as well as the Poisson spacing distribution in two dimensions. Our goal is a phenomenological description of some structural aspects in the territor...

The Cream-coloured Courser Cursorius cursor exsul is a data-deficient shorebird distributed across Eurasia and Africa. The subspecies exsul is endemic to the Cape Verde archipelago. In contrast with their mainland breeding sites, where coursers appear to be nomadic and rare throughout their range, the Cape Verde population is year-round resident an...

Abstract Numerous studies have reported correlations between the heterozygosity of genetic markers and fitness. These heterozygosity–fitness correlations (HFCs) play a central role in evolutionary and conservation biology, yet their mechanistic basis remains open to debate. For example, fitness associations have been widely reported at both neutral...

Chemical cues are arguably the most fundamental means of animal communication and play an important role in mate choice and kin recognition. Consequently, there is growing interest in the use of gas chromatography (GC) to investigate the chemical basis of eco-evolutionary interactions. Both GC-MS (mass spectrometry) and FID (flame ionization detect...

Details on the bibliographic survey. (DOCX)

Datasets used to generate the results presented in this manuscript. This is a compressed zip archive that includes all the raw data that were used to produce the results shown in the manuscript and in S3 File. (ZIP)

R code and accompanying documentation for all analyses presented in this manuscript. All analysis steps are provided in an Rmarkdown document file. (PDF)

The vignette ‘GCalignR: Step by Step’ gives an more detailed introduction into the usage of the package functionalities to tune parameters for aligning peak data. (HTML)

Summary of published algorithms implemented in publicly available software. (DOCX)

The vignette ‘GCalignR: How does the Algorithms work?’ gives an introduction into the concepts of the algorithm and illustrates how each step of the alignment procedure alters the outcome based on simple datasets consisting of simulated chromatograms. (HTML)

Chemical signals are arguably the oldest and most fundamental means of animal communication and play a fundamental role in mate choice and kin selection. A key tool for uncovering broad patterns of chemical similarity is gas chromatography (GC). However, downstream analyses rely on the correct alignment of homologous substances, represented by peak...