Events at the MPIAB

Sisters, mothers, and others: how kin shape the life-history of an asocial squirrel

Institute Seminar by Caitlin Wells
  • Date: Jun 3, 2025
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Caitlin Wells
  • Dr. Caitlin Wells, Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University. Caitlin is a conservation ecologist whose work integrates evolutionary ecology, animal behavior, and conservation genomics to predict the responses of wild vertebrates to environmental change. Caitlin works with birds (primarily waterfowl) and mammals (rodents, elephants, and primates) of conservation concern, primarily in the mountains and the tropics, with long-term work in Hawaii, the Rocky Mountains, and Uganda. She is currently the PI of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory’s long-term ground squirrel project studying social and reproductive behavior, accelerated aging, life histories, and phenological mismatch under climatic change.
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Bücklestrasse + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: bbarrett@ab.mpg.de
Among mammals, the formation of matrilines – multigenerational female kin groups – is thought to be a key transition toward complex social living in primates, carnivores, and ground-dwelling squirrels. The costs and benefits of interactions with female kin have been well-identified for social species. However, understanding the influence of female kin in less social species is essential for ... [more]

Blackcap migration - adaptation in time and space

Institute Seminar by Miriam Liedvogel
  • Date: Jun 17, 2025
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Miriam Liedvogel
  • Miriam Liedvogel is Director of the Institute of Avian Research “Vogelwarte Helgoland” and Professor of Ornithology at Carl-von-Ossietzky University Oldenburg. She is fascinated by the phenomenon of bird migration and with her research asks, how this fascinating behaviour is controlled, coordinated and regulated on the molecular level? To address this question, she links careful behavioural observation and state-of-the-art tracking migration in the wild to carefully characterise migratory behaviour under controlled conditions as well as free flying birds, with whole genome sequencing and gene expression approaches to match genotype to phenotype. Her work is funded through the European Commission (Marie Curie Fellowship), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Feodor Lynen Fellowship), the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Max Planck Society (MPG). Miriam has been awarded various prices and fellowships, e.g. an award for outstanding supervision by the Universitätsgesellschaft Oldenburg (UGO), the JED Williams Medal for her committee work. Besides regularly talking at both national and international scientific conferences, Miriam enjoys to communicate science to children and the general public.
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Bücklestrasse + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: aflack@ab.mpg.de
Understanding the genetics of bird migration is a long-standing goal in evolutionary biology. Blackcaps Sylvia atricapilla are ideal for this work as different populations exhibit enormous difference in migratory behaviour and little else. We characterize (i) phenotype, population structure and demographic history the blackcap, and (ii) identify sequence variants and signaling pathways that are ... [more]

Genomic Pillars of the Social Brain: Lessons from the Honey Bee

Institute Seminar by Gene Robinson
  • Institute seminar moved to MONDAY
  • Date: Jun 23, 2025
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Gene Robinson
  • Gene E. Robinson (Ph.D., Cornell University, 1986) joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. He holds a University Swanlund Chair and Center for Advanced Study Professorship, is director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), and former director of the University's Neuroscience Program. Robinson pioneered the application of genomics to the study of social behavior, has been honored with the Wolf Prize in Agriculture, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and American Philosophical Society.
  • Location: MPI-AB Möggingen
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Möggingen + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
[more]

Rank and social context influence sleep in wild chimpanzees

Institute Seminar by Clara Hozer
  • Date: Jul 1, 2025
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Clara Hozer
  • Clara Hozer obtained her PhD at the National Museum of Natural History in France, under the supervision of Fabien Pifferi, where she investigated the links between circadian rhythms, aging, and survival in the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus). She then pursued a first postdoctoral position focusing on sleep characteristics in the same species. Following this, she was awarded a Fyssen Foundation fellowship to study sleep in wild chimpanzees at the University of Neuchâtel, under the supervision of Klaus Zuberbühler, for a period of two years.
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Bücklestrasse + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: nslania@ab.mpg.de
Sleep is vital for health and fitness, and its expression is shaped by ecological and social contexts that may either promote or disturb it. Most research, however, has focused on captive settings, detached from natural environments that can modify the balance between benefits and drawbacks of sleeping in a group. Using direct recording of sleep using a custom-made, infrared remote camera, mounted ... [more]

Scientific Writing (workshop)

2-tägiger Kurs
  • Start: Jul 3, 2025
  • End: Jul 4, 2025
  • Speaker: Brian Cusack, Science Craft
  • Dr. Brian Cusack comes from Cork, Ireland and received his Ph.D. in Genetics from Trinity College, Dublin in 2007. During his Ph.D. Brian received the kind of mentoring that he continues to consider as the gold-standard for graduate students. After completing his first postdoc at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, Brian conducted post-doctoral research in evolutionary genomics at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. In February 2012, together with Rick Scavetta, Brian co-founded Science Craft in Berlin. Since then Brian has provided high-level training workshops for more than a thousand researchers throughout Germany as well as in Norway and China.
  • Location: tba
  • Room: tba
  • Host: IMPRS
  • Contact: imprs@uni-konstanz.de
[more]

Getting Published and Mastering Peer Review (workshop)

  • Start: Jul 7, 2025
  • End: Jul 8, 2025
  • Speaker: Brian Cusack, Science Craft
  • Dr. Brian Cusack comes from Cork, Ireland and received his Ph.D. in Genetics from Trinity College, Dublin in 2007. During his Ph.D. Brian received the kind of mentoring that he continues to consider as the gold-standard for graduate students. After completing his first postdoc at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, Brian conducted post-doctoral research in evolutionary genomics at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. In February 2012, together with Rick Scavetta, Brian co-founded Science Craft in Berlin. Since then Brian has provided high-level training workshops for more than a thousand researchers throughout Germany as well as in Norway and China.
  • Location: tba
  • Room: tba
  • Host: IMPRS
  • Contact: imprs@uni-konstanz.de
[more]

Courtship complexity: insights from Neotropical birds

Institute Seminar by Lilian Manica
  • Date: Jul 8, 2025
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Lilian Manica
  • Lilian Tonelli Manica is a professor in the Department of Zoology at the Federal University of Paraná and advise students at the Graduate Program in Zoology and Graduate Program in Ecology and Conservation of the same institution. She coordinates the Behavioural Ecology and Ornithology Lab, developing projects to understand the importance of immediate and evolutionary mechanisms in the production of bird behaviors. Her interests include sexual selection, communication, migration, mating systems and conservation. Her work explores, among other topics, cooperative displays in manakins, the relationship between parasitism and ornamentation, and environmental impacts on bird ecology.
  • Location: University of Konstanz + online
  • Room: ZT 702
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: dperez@ab.mpg.de
Courtship displays, driven by sexual selection, are fascinating behaviors across a wide range of animal taxa. Birds, in particular, serve as excellent study models due to their often multimodal sexual exhibitions, which involve various sensory modalities such as coloration, body movements, and vocalizations. In this lecture, I will share insights from my research on Neotropical bird species. My ... [more]

Institute Seminar by Genevieve Finerty

Institute Seminar by Genevieve Finerty
[more]

Data Visualization with R - Mastering Visual Data Communication (online course)

  • Start: Nov 11, 2025 09:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • End: Nov 27, 2025 05:30 PM
  • Speaker: Rick Scavetta
  • Rick Scavetta has been operating as an independent workshop trainer, freelance data scientist, and co-founder since 2012. Under the name Scavetta Academy, Rick maintains a strong and recurring presence at prominent research institutes throughout Germany. These include several Max Planck Institutes and Excellence Clusters, covering diverse fields such as primatology, earth sciences, marine biology, molecular genetics, and behavioral psychology. With online courses featured on DataCamp, Rick's teachings have reached more than 200,000 students since 2016. Additionally, he has made contributions to advanced data science courses offered by O’Reilly and Manning.
  • Location: online
  • Host: IMPRS AND KONSTANZ RESEARCH SCHOOL
  • Contact: imprs@uni-konstanz.de
[more]
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