Dr Jolle Jolles
Group Leader
I am a Senior Research Scientist (Investigador Cientifico) at the CSIC Centre for Advanced Studies Blanes (CEAB) in Catalunya, Spain. After acquiring my PhD at the University of Cambridge (2016), I have held positions in the UK, Germany, and Spain, including a von Humboldt Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, a Zukunftskolleg Fellowship at the University of Konstanz, a Severo Ochoa postdoctoral position at CREAF, and a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship at CEAB-CSIC. With a background in Behavioural Ecology and Experimental Biology, a lot of my work has focused on unravelling the role of individual heterogeneity and its consequences for the collective behaviour and functioning of animal groups. More recently I have started to bridge out to study the broader social and ecological consequences of behavioural variation in relation to environmental change. In particular, I have recently set up a long-term research line to study how freshwater fish of intermittent rivers and streams (IRES) cope with droughts. I use a strongly interdisciplinary approach and we have our own dedicated laboratory for the experimental study of animals – including state-of-the-art approaches to monitor, track and analyse animal behaviour – as well as our own field sites in Catalunya for monitoring fish populations and environmental change in intermittent streams. Since my PhD I have also been pushing the use of novel mechanistic and technological approaches and been at the forefront of helping bring low-cost, open electronics to the Biological Sciences, including theoretical articles, organising workshops, and creating tutorial websites.

Marçal Pou Rossell
PhD student

Dr Jesus Darío Nuñez
Postdoc

Dr Jakob Gismann
Technician

Amanda Forcadas Balaguer
MSc student

Milan de Haan
MSc student

Anna Cornet Sans
MSc student

Paul Prat
MSc student

Julianne Pickard
BSc student

Alexander Böhm
MSc student
Hello I am Alexander Böhm (26). I am currently doing my Masters Thesis about the phenotypic and behavioral changes of cavefish to understand the evolution of their troglomorphic lifestyle. My interests lie in the fields of Behavioural Biology and Marine Biology and especially the development of novel tools for empirical research. I do this by implementing different 3D-printing methods as well as using drones and aerial imagery for complex 3D habitat reconstructions. I am currently also developing small custom electronics for recording and logging both animal and environmental data in the field. In my spare time I build and maintain various aquaria and breed my own corals and am very interested in trying to understand the complex biological and environmental interactions necessary in marine reef ecosystems to ensure their survival in the wild and captivity.

Pauline Ferereira
MSc student
Hello everyone :) ! Like many other people, I really like animals. Therefore, after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in biology (“organisms biology, population, environment”) in France (yes, I’m French!), I took part in many volunteering projects during 6 months, in various safeguarding and reintroduction structures, such as a project in Thailand. Currently, I am a master student in Ethology, animal and human behaviour at the university of Rennes, France. I had the great opportunity to do my first-year internship with Jolle at the University of Konstanz. During my internship I did a mechanistic study of the boldness personality trait and its link to predation risk on three-spined sticklebacks. I had a great time here at Konstanz, I highly recommend it.

Felicitas Oehler
MSc student
I am a Masters student in Biology with the focus on Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Constance. Before, I  did an internship at the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles where I helped with the conservation and rehabilitation of freshwater turtles and sea turtles. The research project “Schooling in the dark” I am conducting in the JollesLab is part of my Master’s degree. Together with Jana, I will analyse the changes of schooling behaviour in sticklebacks under different light intensities, focusing on the dark. I am very happy to gain insights in the working atmosphere in the lab of Jolle Jolles and the Department of Collective Behaviour, and learn how to set up my own project, run experiments, and conduct analyses in R.

Jana Hörsh
MSc student
I am a Master student at the University of Konstanz. During my studies I discovered my fascination for animal behaviour and ecology and developed a particular interest in animal cognition and learning. Therefore, I conducted my Bachelor’s thesis in the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Plank Institute for Ornithology looking at group composition and collective problem solving in Zebra Finches. As a part of a master course I decided to do a project with Felicitas under the supervision of Jolle Jolles. Our project is focused on the schooling behaviour of sticklebacks at different light conditions, wondering how they can cope with no visible light available. It is very exciting to work with novel technologies to film and track the fish schools in the dark.

Selin Ersoy
Research intern
My research interests are behavioural ecology, social interactions, cultural behaviour, and cognition. After my BSc I worked as a field assistant for one year at the Kalahari Meerkat Project in South Africa and conducted my own independent analysis project on meerkat behaviour. I then did a MSc on cognitive biology at the University of Vienna under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Bugnyar. I designed and conducted several observational and experimental studies to investigate social behaviour and cognitive abilities of common ravens. I am doing a research internship in Jolle’s group studying predator-prey interactions and the role of phenotypic variation on individual survival in three-spined sticklebacks.

Jonas Bleilevens
MSc student
During the first semester of my Masters, I did a research project as part of the Fish Ecology advanced course supervised by  Jolle Jolles and Jasminca Behrmann-Godel. I was interested in the role of individual behavioural types of three-spined stickleback and their effects on individual learning capabilities. Together with another masters student I set-up an experiment with 60 sticklebacks that we tested on some classic personality assays and association and reversal learning tasks. It was a great experience for me and I learned important new methods that are important to run a solid and controlled behavioural experiment.

Lauren de Wit
MSc student
Hi everyone! My name is Lauren and I am a master student fascinated by animal behaviour. The last six months I had the pleasure of working with Jolle and his three-spined sticklebacks at the University of Konstanz. I studied the effects of individual behavioural tendencies on group learning performance. Different group compositions were tested in a Y-maze to study group learning and reversal learning. I have learned a lot about individual tendencies and group dynamics by observing stickleback behaviour both during experiments and in their housing tanks.

Marc Oliver Ley
BSc student
In my Bachelor’s thesis, we looked at the influences on the predator-prey relationship between Pike and sticklebacks, caused by Schistocephalus solidus, a behaviour altering parasite. I conducted a range of experiments in the lab and investigated how the parasite altered the surival of individual sticklebacks. I found that that the parasite changes the infected sticklebacks behaviour considerably towards a piscivorous predator like the pike. Over the year I had a great experience learning how to run and analyse my own lab experiments.