About me

Update

I am now a researcher at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) within the EcoSys research unit and the Sol&Tox team. I focus on how the soil fauna responds to contaminant exposure using a combination of modeling and laboratory experiments. My goal is to develop eco-evolutionary models allowing to understand how soil organisms cope with contaminant exposure and at what costs for soil functions.

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I am a broadly trained behavioral ecologist who uses a combination of empirical, theoretical and statistical approaches to understand how behavioral variation responds to environmental cues and under which conditions such variation impact higher order processes at the population and community levels. A primary interest of my research program is to use theoretical foundations in the field of animal personality to understand the processes by which individuals cope with the increasing pressures resulting from human activities.

After obtaining my Master's degree in Environmental Sciences at the École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Toulouse in France, I set sail for McGill University in Montréal, Canada where I studied how behavioral variation is impacted by insecticide exposure in jumping spiders during my PhD. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Evolutionary Ecology of Variation Laboratory in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Dakota State University. My current projects focus on the role of the genetics and environmental sources of variation that shape the integration between phenotypic traits: behavior, physiology, life history and extended phenotypes such as nest architecture, using crickets and solitary bees as model systems.

Contact

Email: raphael.royaute<at>inrae<dot>fr

CV