Overview Dobberke Grants of the Dr. J.L. Dobberke Foundation for Comparative Psychology

Joseph Burant, NIOO-KNAW

Using microcontrollers and sensors to continuously collect high-resolution behavioural and environmental data from box-nesting passerines to investigate the scale at which ambient conditions influence individual variation in nesting behaviours and reproductive performance.

Mahesh Karnani, VU Amsterdam

The Dutch Automated Ethology Meeting will be the venue for discussing recent, transformative advances in animal-centered automated behavior monitoring within liveable laboratory environments.

Sjouke Kingma, WUR

Why some animals live in groups and how helping behaviour in groups evolved is largely unclear. To study whether adverse ecological circumstances such as limited availability of nesting habitat and food availability makes birds more social and cooperation more beneficial.

Alexander Kotrschal, WUR

To study the impact of predation on the cognitive abilities of nine-spined stickleback in the wild.

Jan Kreider, RUG

To aim at identifying proximate environmental triggers of social breeding behaviours in the socially plastic bee Exoneura robusta. Furthermore,using genetic analyses to aim at deriving inclusive fitness estimates to evaluate the fitness consequences of social behaviours.

Esther Langen, UU

To investigate whether training laboratory mice and rats for procedures such as injections, blood sampling or oral gavage can be a practical way to refine these procedures. To assess the effects of training, we want to measure behavioural and physiological indicators of stress in trained vs. non‐trained animals undergoing such a procedure.

Kevin Matson, WUR

Anthropogenic noise pollution, through audio masking, can obscure avian communication and increase predation risk for urban birds such as great tits. Testing this theory by collecting measurements on feeding times and visitation rates at bird feeders in quiet and noisy areas in combination with experimental sound treatments.

Inonge Reimert, WUR

In this project, a self-initiated and automated judgement bias test for pigs will be developed along with other measurements of affective state. The use of a touch screen would aid to finetune our (future) measurements and tests of affective states in pigs.

Joana Sabino Pinto, WUR

This project investigates how infectious disease influences mate choice in poison frogs, ultimately aiming to understand the role of sexual selection in the evolution of disease resistance.

Niki Teunissen, WUR

To solve the evolutionary puzzle of why many animals live in social groups, we need to understand when and why individuals stay home instead of moving elsewhere to breed independently. To apply novel tracking technologies to a model social bird to detect all individuals that (attempt to) leave home, to reveal whether costs of leaving and/or benefits of staying at home drive the evolution of group living.

Claudia Vinke, UU

Care behaviours are understudied in dogs, but may have long lasting effects on a dog’s behaviour and animal welfare. The aim of this research is to determine how and what care behaviour mother dogs show towards their pups.

Nynke Wemer, RUG

A growth in antropogenic activity results in an increase of human-wildlife conflict which in turn can result in the extinction of large carnivores. This study aims to use movement behaviour in order to informs us of cheetah presence, abundance and occupancy so we can manage this species and identify possible corridors of tolerance in order to protect this keystone species.

Yannick Wiegers, UU

To study the individuality of red-faced spider monkey (Ateles paniscus) 'whinny' vocalizations and use this to develop an acoustic population monitoring technique for these threatened primates.