Talk at the White sea stickleback workshop

I was invited to give a talk today as part of the yearly workshop of the White Sea Stickleback Research Group. Virtual because of covid of course, so unfortunately no trip to the White Sea yet. But some great questions, nice to see the research being conducted by Dmitry Lajus and his group, and meeting some fellow stickleback researchers. They also have a very active instagram account: three little spines.

Seminar at CEAB

Today I gave a seminar at CEAB, a CSIC research institute in Blanes, Spain focused on understanding aquatic ecosystems. Excited about the potential to collaborate on experimental and observational work on freshwater and marine fish populations in the region.

Talk at the ASAB 2020 Virtual meeting

Today I gave a talk at the 2020 ASAB Summer meeting about my recent work about the effects of Schistocephalus parasite infection on individual and social behaviour (paper here). It was my first talk at a virtual meeting, which took a bit more time to prepare, but despite being completely virtual due to the covid-19 pandemic, the conference turned out really well. Many people “attended” my talk, which was followed by a live Q&A with the other speakers in my session. All other conferences I was planning to attend this year (at least 4) have been cancelled this year, so it was great to that this conference was made possible in the virtual realm at least!

Presented at BES Impacts of extreme climatic events

The past years I have been bridging the fields of behavioural ecology with mechanistic perspectives of collective behaviour research. I have recently started to use these concepts to set up some projects to understand how fish populations deal with environmental change, including field work in the Spanish Pyrenees focused specifically on the role of individual heterogeneity in the context of severe effects of floods and droughts.

I have just returned from York where I have presented some of my ideas at the BES conference Impacts of extreme climatic events on ecosystems. It was a great meeting, with many in-depth group discussions about the effects of climatic events on different ecosystems and it was nice to be able to present and discuss my research plans with the broad diversity of people attending. Good to be back in the UK for a couple days as well!

 

Organiser ASAB workshop on Raspberry Pi’s for researchers

At the ASAB Summer Conference in Konstanz this year, which was focused on new frontiers in the Study of Animal Behaviour, I gave a half-day workshop about automating behavioural experiments with Raspberry Pi’s.

After a general introduction, I discussed its use in animal behaviour research, how to set up, work with, and remotely control a raspberry pi, how to work with the rpi camera system, and finally how to automate recording, including via my own pirecorder software.

I started working with these amazing machines during my PhD, which where then still quite difficult to set up and quite slow, but now with the newest model for almost the same low price, so much is possible!

It was great to see so many people (120) interested in this great open-source technology for their own work, and many told me soon afterwards they immideately started setting-up their own systems.

Due to the interest and enthusiasm I am planning to give more and more hands-on workshops in the near future. Stay tuned!

 

Talk at ASAB Summer conference

After chairing one of the sessions at the ASAB Summer Conference in Konstanz today it was time to give a talk myself. I presented an exciting project that explores the role of Schistocephalus parasite infection on individual movement and social interactions. Using experiments and individual-based modelling we show mechanistically this fascinating parasite strongly impairs mobility, with large cascading effects for animal groups.

Talk at SEB conference Florence

The last couple days I have been in Florence for the SEB conference. What a great location to have a conference! Where else can you have pizza for breakfast?

On Tuesday I gave a talk about a mechanistic framework I am developing with Shaun Killen to understand the role of individual heterogeneity in collective behaviour. The sessions this year are all really relevant to me and saw lots of great talks and posters and nice to bump into academic friends from around the world. Too many new project ideas! But I think some nice new collaborations will come from it as well.

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Departmental seminar Münster University

Today I visited Münster to give an invited departmental seminar at the Institute for Evolution & Biodiversity. It was great to see the nice stickleback labs of Jörn Scharsack and Joachim Kurz and the way in which they are able to experimentally parasitise the fish with Schistocephalus.

Really enjoyed meeting many other members of the department and the very enthusiastic students in the group. I am excited about the possibilities for future collaborations with Jörn to unravel the mechanistic underpinnings of parasite infection and its link to personality variation. Thanks again to Jörn and Nicolle for inviting me!

Departmental seminar University of Bonn

Today I visited the Institute for Zoology at the University of Bonn. I was invited by Gerhard von der Emde to give a departmental seminar and discuss ideas for investigating individual differences and collective behaviour in weakly electric fish.

Gerhard is an expert on electro-signalling and communicating in weakly electric fish and has been doing great work on unravelling the potential ways that these fish use their electric field. See for example their recent paper in PNAS that shows fish actively use electrocommunication in their interactions.

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Poster at the von Humboldt conference

The last three days I attended the annual von Humboldt conference. It was great fun meeting my fellow research fellows and learning about their (extremely diverse!) work. Quite surprised to learn I was the only Dutch research fellow this year among the many nationalities. Had the chance to present my work during the poster session, which was great fun, and exciting to showcase my new tracking software live using a mobile projector. Got many new ideas these last couple days by chatting with the other researchers at such an inter-discplinary level.

Invited seminar Glasgow University

jolle-seminar-glasgow-collectivebehaviour This week I visited Shaun Killen in Glasgow and gave a seminar at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine. Three stimulating days with lots of productive discussion and research ideas for collaboration on the relationship between physiology, personality differences and collective behaviour. Really great to meet the Killen lab and drink some proper Ales and Whiskeys. Thanks to Shaun for hosting me!

Talk at ISBE conference, New York

I gave a talk at the fantastic ISBE Conference in New York this year, entitled Effects of heterogeneity on collective behaviour. My presentation focused on the role of the boldness and sociability personality traits on the collective movements, coordination, and leadership in pairs and small groups of three-spined sticklebacks. A pdf of the talk can be found here (link removed).