SFB-TRR 212: NC³
The Transregional Collaborative Research Centre (CRC-TRR) 212 ‘NC³’ has been combining ecology with behavioural, evolutionary and theoretical biology since 2018 to investigate how interactions between individuals and their environment lead to individualised niches through three mechanisms: niche selection, niche conformity and niche construction (NC³). In this way, researchers from the Universities of Bielefeld, Münster and Jena develop a new synthesis of individualisation, taking into account that environmental conditions change throughout an animal's lifetime. The aim is to gain an unprecedented understanding of how and why individuals exploit only eyploit a tiny subset of the species' niche, and the implications this has for both ecological adjustment and evolutionary adaptation in a rapidly changing world.
