PhD projects 2019

Open PhD positions for own proposal elaboration within Organismal Biology

Keywords Organismal Biology, behaviour, ecology, evolution, physiology, neurobiology
Supervisor: IMPRS faculty member, to be contacted with an own research proposal

Collective sensory experience drives olfactory coding

Keywords olfactory coding, honeybees, calcium imaging, large data analysis, animal behaviour
Main advisor Giovanni Galizia, University of Konstanz

About the molecular fundations of olfaction: Is coding combinatorial or multidimensional?

Keywords olfactory coding, honeybees, calcium imaging, large data analysis, animal behaviour
Main advisor Giovanni Galizia, University of Konstanz

The role of testosterone for socio-sexual behaviours of domestic chicken

Keywords Sexual development, chicken brain, transgenic, social behaviour, telemetric
Main advisor Manfred Gahr, MPIO

The interaction between social behaviour and physical structures in coral reef fishes

Keywords coral reef fish, social behaviour, ecological engineering, physical structure, SCUBA, machine-learning, animal tracking, social network analysis
Main supervisor Alex Jordan, MPI for Ornithology

Quantitative comparison of behavioural evolution in social fishes

Keywords cichlid fishes, social behaviour, socio-cognitive skills, SCUBA, machine-learning, animal tracking, social network analysis, Lake Tanganyika
Main supervisor Alex Jordan, MPI for Ornithology

Social contagion of stress responses and consequences for collective action in birds

Keywords: animal social networks, collective behaviour, group-living, indirect effects, social evolution, social resilience, stress physiology
Applicants are invited to contact Dr. Damien Farine to discuss the project ideas and research topic.

Collective sensing of the resource landscape in migratory fruit bats

Keywords: migration, animal tracking, GPS, foraging, energetic expenditure, sensory networks
Advisors: Teague O'Mara, Dina Dechmann and Martin Wikelski, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Radolfzell

Collective migration in a long-distance social migrant

Keywords white storks, collective migration, animal tracking, group coordination, flight energetics
Main supervisor Andrea Flack, MPI for Ornithology

Computational Approaches to the Experimental Study of Animal Collectives

Keywords self-organization, swarm, school, behavior, information, automated tracking, machine learning, virtual reality, inverse methodologies.
Main adviser Iain Couzin, MPI for Ornithology + University of Konstanz

Collective Animal Behaviour

Keywords self-organization, swarm, schooling, behavior, information, fish, locusts, birds, tracking, computer vision, virtual reality, self-organization, decision-making, individual differences, evolution
Main adviser Iain Couzin, MPI for Ornithology + University of Konstanz

3 positions - the neurobiological and behavioural basis of swarming in locusts

Keywords: Locust swarm, virtual reality, collective behaviour, sensory coding, active sensing, olfaction, decision making
Main advisors:
Giovanni Galizia, University of Konstanz
Einat Couzin-Fuchs, University of Konstanz
Iain Couzin, University of Konstanz + MPI for Ornithology

Social learning and cultural inheritance in birds, Parus major

Keywords: collective behaviour, social learning, animal culture, birds, cognitive ecology
Main advisor: Lucy Aplin, MPI for Ornithology