GELIFES Seminars - Christian Tudorache

Link to seminar

Christian Tudorache (Leiden University)

Coping with the clock

Personality, rhythmicity and heritability

When faced with internal and external stressors, animals exhibit a range of correlated behavioural and physiological responses that remain consistent over time and across situations. These “stress coping styles” can span a proactive–reactive continuum within a population, with proactive individuals showing active (risk-taking, explorative, aggressive) attempts to counteract a potential stressor, while reactive individuals are more passive (risk-avoiding, non-explorative, non-aggressive). Stress-coping styles have significant fitness consequences, affecting survival and reproductive success, and have been studied in a wide variety of vertebrate taxa, including fish.

I will present recent results on risk taking, its association with the biological clock and its heritability. Previously, we have shown in zebrafish that different coping styles are associated with different cortisol responses during the recovery from stress over time: proactive fish show a faster recovery back to baseline levels and a lower risk for stress-related disorders than reactive fish. Proactive fish also exhibit robust rhythms of the biological clock with large amplitudes on the level of clock gene expression, melatonin and cortisol fluctuation and behavioural activity, while reactive fish completely lack any rhythmicity. The rhythmicity of the proactive fish, however, decreased when challenged with constant light conditions, whereas the rhythmicity of reactive individuals was not altered. Finally, parental risk-taking behaviour, the base for selecting coping styles, is a good predictor for a large number of larval and adult behavioural parameters, within and between generations. A number of these parameters are consistent over ontogenetic stages within the same generation, and particularly risk-taking, aggressiveness, and swimming behaviour, are correlated over multiple generations, establishing heritability of coping styles.

Biosketch:
Dr. Christian Tudorache is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Physiology and Behaviour at the Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University. His research focuses on the physiological and behavioural mechanisms underlying stress responses in animals, particularly fish. Using zebrafish and three-spined sticklebacks as primary model organisms, he investigates stress-coping styles, biological rhythms, and the impacts of environmental stressors, such as light pollution and noise. His interdisciplinary approach combines molecular biology, biomechanics, and field ecology to explore how stress affects animal behaviour and physiology.