Dr Anne Peters

Senior Lecturer
ARC Future Fellow

PhD, Australian National University, 2001

Telephone: +61-3-9905 6287
Fax: +61-3-9905-5613
E-mail: Anne.Peters@monash.edu

Google Scholar

• Behavioural Ecology
• Sexual selection
• Communication by honest signals
• Avian colouration
• Life-history trade-offs
• Ecological immunology
• Behavioural endocrinology

Sexual selection: Honesty of sexual ornaments One of my main fields of research concerns physiological mechanisms that maintain honest signalling of individual quality through ornamentation. With my research group I tested the role of hormonal effects (testosterone) and dependence on general condition or specific dietary components (antioxidants mainly) as such honesty-enforcing links using birds as model organisms. Currently we are expanding this approach by looking at interactions between mechanisms (testosterone and carotenoids; multiple antioxidants).

Life-history trade-offs: the role of ecological immunology Although the immune system is central to survival, animals show great variation in their immune investment. This is related to trade-offs resulting from costs of immune system maintenance and activation and competing demands (investment in sexual signals, parental care). I study how these trade-offs are affected by individual quality, hormonal status, diet quality and environmental factors.

Interactions between mating and breeding system in Australian fairy-wrens Fairy-wrens are cooperatively breeding small songbirds, that are renowned for their striking seasonal plumage in males, their complex reproductive strategy and above all their extreme unfaithfulness. I showed that testosterone regulates how males balance investment in sexual attractiveness and parental care in superb fairy-wrens. Recently, we discovered that its close relation, the purple-crowned fairy-wren, follows a faithful mating strategy, and this appears to have consequences for its mating behaviour, acoustic signals, plumage development, and the cooperative breeding system.

Avian colour signals: form and functions Birds display a fantastic variety of colours, and this is often related to sexual selection. However, colours can also function in crypsis. We are testing hypotheses explaining colour variation by considering avian visual physiology, patterns of variability and sources of colour production.

Purple-crowned fairy-wren male in breeding plumage
© Michelle Hall

Please contact me if you are interested in exploring research opportunities in any of these research areas. My research approaches include observational and experimental studies on free-living as well as captive birds. Techniques include behavioural observations, reflectance spectrometry, immune assays and manipulations, hormone analysis and treatment by implants, dietary manipulations.

Potential honours projects include, but are not limited to, physiological costs of breeding plumage in fairy-wrens, effects of dietary antioxidants on colour, immune strategies of urban and rural birds, comparative analysis of colour signals in fairy-wrens.

I am currently interested in finding a suitable PhD student who would like to take the research on the mating and breeding system of the purple-crowned fairy-wren (see photo on the right for a male in breeding plumage) to the next level. We already have a substantial set of available correlational data, plasma and blood samples for analysis of immune status, and this could be expanded with experimental work in the field (Kimberleys).