Jos Kramer

ERC-funded working group, hosted by Prof. Sandra Steiger (Evolutionary Animal Ecology)

Research interests:

I initially studied cooperative behaviors in birds (diploma) and insects (PhD), but switched to microbial study systems for my postdocs, where I examined how cooperation and predation shapes microbial communities and their functioning. In my current research, I am combining these independent lines of research into an interdisciplinary approach to examine:

• The socioecology of animal-microbe interactions. Animals constantly interact with a vast diversity of harmful and beneficial microbes, and can leverage sophisticated social strategies to control those interactions. Using burying beetles (Nicrophorus sp.) as my main animal model system, I explore how animals can use social behaviors to combat harmful microbes and ensure that they properly transmit – and profit from – beneficial symbionts. Conversely, I am also interested in how interactions among microbes shape host fitness and social life.
• Impact of (anthropogenic) environmental change on animal-microbe interactions. I am interested in exploring the consequences of environmental change (e.g., heat stress) on animal-microbe interactions (e.g., efficiency of social strategies for microbial control).
• The evolution of parental care and family life in insects. Burying beetles use parental (social) behaviors to control their microbial interaction partners, and this fits well with my long-standing interest in exploring how insect parental care and social (family) life originated from a solitary state and evolved to become more complex.
• Predation and cooperation in microbes. During my last postdoc, I conducted evolution experiments involving different predators of microbes (e.g., myxobacteria, slime molds, and nematodes). I am interested in how these predators shape prey community composition and diversity, and drive predator-prey co-evolution and adaptation.
• The conceptual framework of social evolution research. Having studied social behaviors in birds, insects, and bacteria, I have a keen interest in integrating research on social behaviors from vastly different taxonomic groups to uncover general principles shaping social evolution across different domains of life.