Rita S. Andrade

Ph.D. project aims are: combining a field and laboratory approach, evaluate the level of social complexity of the M. lusitanicus species; compare M. lusitanicus social system and ecological correlates with those of other rodent species, contributing to the general understanding of how sociality evolved, since the species, with its fossorial habits, constitutes a different and possibly important evolutionary transition of social complexity; identify evolutionary patterns of sociality, as well as to make predictions about the species adaptiveness to new ecological conditions in face of environmental changes.