Past Courses / Events

Every autumn and spring, billions of songbirds undertake migratory flights that only recently became possible to study in these small species, thanks to advances in biologging technology that made loggers light enough to record their activity continuously across the year in the wild. This ... [more]

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How reliably can we count bats from videos of their evening emergence? At Kasanka National Park, Zambia, recordings of straw-coloured fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) provide an opportunity to evaluate automated counting under challenging conditions. This talk presents the development and evaluation of a ... [more]

To face current biodiversity declines, we need to extensively monitor wild animal populations. Wildlife monitoring relies on many different methods, all with their benefits and disadvantages. Among these, camera traps have become the primary tool to conduct wildlife monitoring due to their ... [more]

Bird migration is associated with morphological adaptations, particularly with traits related to flight. Therefore, changes in migratory propensity could potentially be connected to changes in morphology. The blackbirds from the region of Lake Constance are a partially migratory population, with a ... [more]

We often feel distress when witnessing another individual in pain. The emotional state of others eliciting a similar state in the observer is defined as ‘emotional contagion’. This is observed in many species including humans and rodents. Human fMRI studies identified the anterior cingulate cortex ... [more]

As winters become increasingly milder, we expect rising winter temperatures to affect hibernating animals. However, it is hard to predict the effects of temperature increases on the activity of certain hibernators. In most species, hibernation is periodically interrupted by short instances of ... [more]

Corals are colonial organisms composed of building blocks termed zooids. We are developing an Agent Based Model to study how local interactions between zooids generate globally coherent structures, i.e., colony forms. We focus on Colpophyllia: a meandroid coral from the Caribbean with two prevalent ... [more]

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Over time, leadership in animal groups is expected to become established. This can by driven by information, with successful leaders gaining greater access to foraging opportunities through learning environmental information which can increase their propensity to lead again. However, social ... [more]