Laurine Mathieu - PhD Student 2023/2026

Supervised by Anne Charmantier (CEFE-CNRS) and Samuel Caro (CEFE-CNRS)

Contact

CNRS - CEFE UMR5175, 1919 Route de Mende, 34283 Montpellier

Aile B Etage 2 Office 206

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Project

Urbanisation is one of the most rapid and profound environmental transformations, reshaping habitats and generating novel selective pressures on wildlife. Our research investigates how birds adjust physiologically and evolutionarily to urban environments, focusing on great tits (Parus major) and blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) from Montpellier and nearby forests.

Using a combination of long-term field monitoring (CEFE TIT PROJECT), capture-based physiological assessments, and common garden experiments on hand-reared birds, I aim to disentangle the effects of phenotypic plasticity and genetic differentiation in responses to urbanisation.

The first part of this work examines reproductive physiology, focusing on how urban conditions influence hormone dynamics and reproductive traits such as laying date, clutch size, egg size, and fertilisation success. The second part investigates stress physiology through the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, assessing both baseline and stress-induced glucocorticoid levels. Finally, the third part explores metabolic adaptations to the urban heat island effect using respirometry, measuring thermal physiology and heat tolerance in both wild and experimental settings.

Overall, this thesis integrates field and experimental approaches to provide a comprehensive assessment of how tits adjust to urban environments through endocrine, reproductive, stressrelated, and metabolic pathways. This work will offer novel insights into the physiological bases of urban adaptation and, more broadly, into the capacity of wild vertebrates to cope with rapid anthropogenic environmental change.

More information: ACACIA Project

Bio

• 2021-2023 Master in Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution, Ecology, Evolution and Genomics (Lyon 1)
  • 2^nd year Master thesis: Genetic architecture and gene expression underlying sexual antagonistics traits in Gerromorpha - IGFL (Lyon) - supervised by Abderrahman Khila
  • 1^st year Master thesis: Cognitive abilities in relation to the reproductive success of great tits and ringed flycatchers - LBBE (Lyon)/ Gotland (Sweden) - supervised by Blandine Doligez & Laure Cauchard
• 2020-2021 Licence in Biodiversity (Lyon 1)
• 2018-2020 CPGE BCPST (Lyon)

Conferences

• Novembre 2024          Parus Net - Présentation - Paris
• August 2025          Ecology & Behaviour - Organisation - Montpellier
  • https://ecobhvr2025.sciencesconf.org/
• August 2025          Congress of European Society for Evolutionary Biology - Presentation - Barcelona