CEN Colloquium: Anja Günther, Who innovates and why? Understanding individual differences in rodent innovation

Innovation, defined as the ability to generate novel behaviours or apply existing behaviours to new problems, is increasingly recognized as an important trait shaping how animals respond to human-altered environments. In a series of experiments my group investigated the ecological, developmental, and evolutionary determinants of innovative foraging in rodents. Rodents inhabiting urban or otherwise human-modified habitats show higher innovation propensity than conspecifics from less disturbed environments. For example, striped field mice (Apodemus agrarius) from Berlin were more innovative than rural populations, and comparative work across rodent communities suggests that human-altered environments act as ecological filters, favouring innovative species. Innovation also varies strongly among individuals within populations. Using house mice (Mus musculus), we investigated how and when during ontogeny individual differences in innovation develop and how they are maintained across generations. We found strong evidence that a commensal life style leads to the evolution of innovation propensity, which is at least in part mediated by mate choice and sexual selection. In males, innovative performance is negatively associated with competitive ability and territoriality, suggesting alternative reproductive tactics may in addition help maintain behavioural variation. Overall, these findings identify innovation as a key, partially heritable and condition-dependent trait that mediates (rodent) adaptation to rapid human-induced environmental change.

Speaker bio:

Anja Günther is a behavioural and evolutionary ecologist whose research focuses on how animals—particularly rodents—adapt to changing environments. Her work integrates behavioural ecology, ecophysiology, life-history theory, and evolutionary ecology to understand how rapid adjustment mechanisms, including developmental plasticity and transgenerational effects, enable animals to respond to fast environmental change. Since January 2025, she has served as Professor of Zoology and Animal Ecology at the University of Hildesheim. Prior to this, she led the research group “Behavioural Ecology of Individual Differences” at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology from 2020 to 2025, following several postdoctoral positions at the same institute, Bielefeld University, and the University of Groningen, where she was supported by a personal grant from the Leopoldina – National Academy of Sciences. She completed her doctorate at Bielefeld University and studied biology and biology/chemistry teaching at the University of Osnabrück.

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