Behavioural ecology of Alpine marmots

Alpine marmots (Marmota marmota) are ground dwelling rodents living on the European Alps, with a complex social structure: Family groups can include up to 20 members, including a dominant couple of adults, newborns of the year and subdominants born in the previous years, staying in the family group up to the age of 3-4 years before dispersing or inheriting their parents’ territory. Alpine marmots are key elements in the alpine ecosystem, both as grazers as well as important preys of Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) and Red foxes (Vulpes vulpes): a fact which, together with their complex sociality, makes them an extremely interesting subject for long term studies investigating the effects of environmental change in social species. In 2006, in collaboration with Dr. Bruno Bassano (GPNP, Italy), Prof. Giuseppe Bogliani (University of Pavia, Italy) and Prof. Denis Reale (UQAM, Canada), I started a long-term research project on the behavioural ecology of Alpine marmots. This ongoing study is based on individually tagged Alpine marmots (more than 250 tagged individuals since 2006) observed over their lifetime in 20 family groups in the Orvieilles study area (2100-2300 m a.s.l., Gran Paradiso National Park, Italy). Up to now our research work in Orvieilles has focused on vigilance behaviour (Ferrari et al. 2009), the factors affecting Flight Initiation Distance (Dumont et al. 2012), territorial behaviour (Pasquaretta et al. 2012, 2015), the presence of copying styles (Ferrari et al. 2012) and their relationship with cortisol and oxidative stress (Costantini et al 2012). Currently we are using our long term database to analyze variability in social networks, ecological and social drivers of survival and dispersal and the interaction between personality and life history traits.