PhD student

I am a PhD student in evolutionary ecology using great and blue
tits to compare coloured signals of forest, urban and corsican
birds to assess the impacts of urbanisation and climate
change on these traits and selection associated.

Contact:
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ORCID - Bluesky - ResearchGate

Supervisors: Claire Doutrelant (CEFE - CNRS, Montpellier) & Arnaud Grégoire (CEFE - University of Montpellier).
Project in collaboration with David López Idiáquez.

Thesis project: Climatic, anthropic and intrinsic determinants of ornaments expression and their association to fitness.

Urbanisation and climate change are two major factors driving ongoign environmental changes in wirld populations worldwide. Research has revealed plastic and genetic responses to these anthropogenic changes. A shift in environmental conditions are expected to impose novel slective forces that can shape phenotypic variation of populations living in urban environments. Ornaments such as conspicuous colourations play a crucial role shaping interactions between individuals in inter and intra-sexual contexts. Ornamentals surch as feathers, with carotenoid-based (yellow to red), structural (blue) and melanic colours, are expected to be associated with variation in environmental conditions. Phenotypic divergences are known in urban environments, however understanding the underlying mechanisms driving colour variation are not investigated.

This projects uses a long time dataset from the following of four blue tits populations, three in Corsica and one near Montpellier, and two great tits populations from the city of Montpellier and a nearby forest. Overall it covers 10 to nearly 20 years of colouration data. This dataset results from the work of numerous researchers and students from the CEFE TIT PROJECT.

This thesis aims to:

• Unravel the effects of urbanisation and climate change on carotenoid colouration in the great tits, and investigate whether phenotypic divergence has a temporal pattern.
• Understand which urban characteristic is causing changes in bird colouration using
  1/ common garden experiments to see whether there is plastic or genetic changes.
  2/ metabarcoding data to see what urban and forest birds are eating while they renew their feathers.
• Investigate selection by survival on coloured ornaments for both blue and great tits and compare it between environments.

Bio:

• 2022: Master's degree in evolutionary ecology, Sorbonne Université, France.
        - 2nd year Master thesis: Sublethal effects of pesticides on passerine's health and behaviour. Under the supervision of Jerome Moreau (CEBC - La Rochelle Université, France).
        - 1st year Master thesis: Adaptive effects of rock pigeon (Columbia livia) beak's morphology on the regulation of feather's ectoparasites. Under the supervision of Julien Gasparini (Sorbonne Université, France).
• 2019: Bachelor degree in Life Sciences, Sorbonne Université, France.

Publications: More to come soon

• Preprint: Sandmeyer L., López Idiáquez D., Fargevieille A., Giovannini P., Perret S., del Rey Granado M., Charmantier A., Doutrelant C., Grégoire A.,  2025. BioRxiv. 

• Tchana C. N., Fargevieille A., Sandmeyer L., del Rey Granado M., Grégoire A., Teplitsky C., Loiseau C., Doutrelant C. 2025. Protocalliphora larvae: a moderate lasting impact on yearling coloration and carry-over effects on mother coloration.  Behavioral Ecology 36(4). 
• Jeantet A., Sandmeyer L., Campech C., Audebert F., Agostini S., Pellerin A., Gasparini J. 2023. The “parasite detoxification hypothesis” : lead exposure potentially changes the ecological interaction from parasitism to mutualism. Ecotoxicology 32(5):666-673.

Grants:

• 2000€ ESEB Hewitt Mobility Award 2024 to visit another laboratory - NTNU, Norway
• 2000€ SQUID Student Fellowship in 2023 to visit another laboratoty - NTNU, Norway
• 300£ BOU Member conference attendance grant in 2023