Doctoral Projects 2020

This was the list of our 2020 PhD projects. All projects are fully funded for at least 3 years. Application deadline was January 15th!

Demography, Information and the Movement Ecology of Capuchins

Keywords. Collective behaviour, vocal communication, movement coordination, GPS, computational analysis, group coordination

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Meg Crofoot, MPI of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz, Prof. Dr. Susan Perry, UCLA, and potentially Dr Brendan Barrett, MPI of Animal Behavior and MPI-EvA.

Decision making and collective movement in groups of baboons

Keywords. Collective behaviour, vocal communication, movement coordination, GPS, computational analysis, group coordination, decision-making
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Meg Crofoot and Dr. Roi Harel, University of Konstanz

Ecology of Animal Societies

Keywords. Animal societies, social structure, behavioral variation, modeling, quantitative analysis
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Meg Crofoot, Dr. Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin (MPI of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz), Dr. Karline Janmaat (MPI-AB, University of Amsterdam)

Neurobiology of collective defence in honeybees

Keywords honeybees, defence, neuroethology, collective behaviour, neuromodulation
Supervisor: Dr. Morgane Nouvian morgane.nouvian@uni-konstanz.de.

Factors shaping individual contributions to collective decision-making

Keywords: Ecology, collective decision-making, collective movement, animal tracking, social behaviour.

Supervisor: Dr. Damien Farine MPI of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz

Computational Approaches to the Experimental Study of Animal Collectives

Keywords self-organization, swarm, school, behavior, information, automated tracking, machine learning, virtual reality, inverse methodologies.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Iain Couzin, MPI of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz

Collective Computation in Large Animal Groups

Keywords: This project will employ an integrated empirical and theoretical approach to investigate the relationship between individual and collective computation. The challenge for individuals in groups is to be both robust to noise, and yet sensitive to meaningful (often small) changes in the physical or social environment, such as when a predator is present...

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Iain Couzin, MPI of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz

Collective Animal Behaviour,
3 positions available

Keywords self-organization, swarm, schooling, behavior, information, fish, locusts, birds, tracking, computer vision, virtual reality, self-organization, decision-making, individual differences, evolution
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Iain Couzin, MPI of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz

Using Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) to Determine Causal Relationships in Animal Social Networks

Keywords: the application of Virtual Reality (VR) environments allows us to experimentally dissociate social input and responses, opening powerful avenues of inquiry into the dynamics of social influence and the physiological and neural mechanisms of collective behaviour.

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Iain Couzin, MPI of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz

‘Frame of Mind’ and division of labor of social insects

Keywords: Social insect colonies, is often highly biased by the internal, physiological state of the individual. How sensory information make individuals differ in the way they respond to external stimuli and they differ in the tasks they perform is processed and evaluated...

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Christoph Kleineidam, Department of Biology
University of Konstanz

The role of androgen receptors for singing.

Keywords: Sexual dimorphic behavior like vocalization in songbirds is governed by sexual dimorphic brain structures that exhibit distinct gene expression patterns during development...

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Manfred Gahr, MPI for Ornithology Seewiesen

The genetic background of female singing

Keywords: Singing is common among female songbirds but the frequency of female singing differs considerably between songbird families...

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Manfred Gahr, MPI for Ornithology Seewiesen

Interested in one of these PhD projects? Please apply next term, the current application is closed!

The Max Planck Society and the University of Konstanz are equal opportunity employers and are committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in their workforce and therefore we encourage applications from such qualified individuals. Furthermore, we seek to increase the number of women in those areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply.