Projects of the department Animal Ecology

A large number of projects are being caried out within AnE. These are embedded in one or more labs (see lab-pages).

• Song bird genomics is a project on genomics work on the Great Tit. We have developped a 10000 SNP chip that was run for 2000 birds and are currently sequencing the Great Tit. We closely collaborate with the Animal Breeding and Genomics group of Wageningen University (Prof dr M. Groenen), University of Sheffield (Dr J. Slate) and University of Oxford (Prof dr B. Sheldon).
• Seasonal timing of reproduction and growth is a project that studies the causes and consequences of variation in seasonal timing in Great Tits, Pied Flycatchers and Winter Moths.
• Impact of artificial light on flora and fauna is a project that experimentally studies the impact of artificial light with different spectra by putting up streetlights with white, red or green lamps on forest edges and monitoring the impact on flora and fauna. We closely collaborate with the Plant Ecology & Nature Conservation group of Wageningen University
• Project group Move is a collaborative project on universal movement rules of animals. We study the influence of different habitat or prey distributions on movement patterns, and how the adaptive value of foraging modes varies among individuals. This is a collaboration with NIOZ Yerseke (Prof J. van de Koppel) and Wageningen University (Prof M. Naguib).
• Host-pathogen interaction [link to project page] is a project that studies the interactive ecology of Mallards with a low-pathogenic avian influenza virus in a natural setting. We closely collaborate with the Virology Department of Erasmus Medical Center (Prof dr R.A.M. Fouchier).
• Aging in wild birds [link to project page]. Telomeres (the ends of chromosomes) become shorter with increasing age. There is increasing evidence that telomere shortening is directly related to senescense. We want to study this in great and blue tits on Vlieland, where sub-populations differ consistently in survival rates. Further, family trees are well known, which gives a high power in the detection of heritable components. On Vlieland it is also feasible to let the birds carry an extra weight and to measure the effects on a potential increase in the rate of telomere shortening. In co-operation with Prof Dr Simon Verhulst Groningen University