Doctoral Students

I am an ecologist specialized in tropical ecosystems. I investigated a diverse array of wildlife in South America, Africa and Asia, putting conservation at the forefront of my work. In my PhD, I focus on the effect of human (Homo sapiens) hunting on mammal abundance and movement patterns. In the wider study site of the LuiKotale Bonobo Project, DRC, I assess the mammal community across areas that have been protected for different lengths of time.

• Conservation • Monitoring • Mammal Community • Hunting

I am a behavioral ecologist with training in comparative psychology and ethology. Broadly, I am interested in social cognition, communication, and decision-making in animal societies. For my PhD, I will be studying how spotted hyenas communicate to obtain relevant information that further shapes their decision-making on group coordination. I am excited to combine acoustic, GPS, and accelerometer data to address questions on the social decision-making process in spotted hyenas.

I am interested in mechanisms driving sexual selection, the strategies of individuals to overcome constrains deriving from intra-sexual mate competition and mate choice. In my PhD I will investigate the strategies of male bonobos to enhanced mating and reproductive success and the response of females towards different male mating strategies. I am also interested in the nature of social relationships between males and females, and how demography and kinship affect life history profiles and fitness of individual males.
• Mating strategies • Reproductive success • Social relationships

In my PHD project, I compare native and ornamental flowers in their ability to be an optimal food source for insect pollinators. Since ornamental plants are mainly adapted to human visual preferences and don’t share a long coevolution process with native pollinators, it is hard to say whether insect pollinators can actually use them as reliable food sources.

To investigate this problem, I work with bumblebees and hawkmoths, since both are very visually guided pollinators, with similar visual systems, yet very different foraging strategies and food needs.

I look at their visual preferences, their foraging efficiency and the nectar contents of the flowers and compare these aspects between native and ornamental plants.

Research Group Giovanni Galizia

I'm interested in linking behaviour to neural activity. In my PhD project, I investigate how pathology-related odorants are encoded in the honeybee primary olfactory center, the antennal lobe.

I am curious about how insects perceive their environment and want to understand the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of sensory information. In my PhD I study how the visual system of nocturnal hawkmoths processes highly dynamic visual inputs based on natural sceneries, and how behavioural strategies might optimise sensory acquisition.

Insect  • nocturna  • vision  • neural processing  • natural environment

Hello, I'm Kai, and I have just joined Dr Mark van Kleunen's lab as a PhD student. I am originally from the UK, where I completed my MSc in Biodiversity and Conservation at Queen Mary University of London in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. My MSc examined solitary bee hotel colonisation across City of London green spaces. For my PhD, I'll be working within the GloNAF project, exploring whether threatened native plants and naturalised aliens occupy opposing ends of the functional trait spectrum. Outside of research, I enjoy hiking, playing badminton and trying new recipes, and am slowly attempting to learn German.

I’m interested in sensory ecology and how it mediates animal behavior. Using behavioral data from flower foraging insects, I study how visual mechanisms and experiences shape visual preferences during plant-pollinator interactions.

I am an evolutionary biologist investigating how the natural environment  shapes animal behavior and adaptation. As a PhD student in Prof. Meg Crofoot’s lab at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz, I focus on the sleep ecology of baboons. My research explores how ecological, social, and physiological factors influence sleep patterns in the wild. By using GPS collars and accelerometers, I track baboon movement and activity to understand how primates optimize sleep in dynamic environments. Through an integrative approach that combines behavioral ecology, sleep biology, and environmental science, I aim to uncover the adaptive role of sleep in shaping survival strategies.

My main interest is social behaviour of bonobos (Pan paniscus): its evolution, structure and functions. I am interested in the dynamics of bonobo networks: how their properties change with ecological factors and how individuals’ positions vary in the potential influence on network structure. Coming from a mathematical background, I employ Bayesian Social Network Analysis in my research and address methodological challenges in its application in long-term data-sets. I am particularly fascinated by female migrants and their integration into communities.

• Bonobo • Network analysis • Social behaviour

PhD Project:
Implementation of research-based coral restoration practices through coral thermal assay pre-screening and microbiome transplantation to increase visible and invisible biodiversity – creating a sustainable blueprint for science-led coral restoration.

Move.inFormation Lab

I am interested in how animals deal with changing environments, plastically adapting their behavior and physiology. For my PhD I work with locusts’ collective movement and explore the key behavioral and environmental drivers of swarm formation in locusts, as well as how the genetic make-up of a species and the environmental context it lives in contribute to generate the specific phenotypes these species express.

Couzin-Fuchs lab