Past Events

Camera trapping for large scale monitoring

Institute Seminar by Fabiola Iannarilli
  • Date: Feb 10, 2026
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Fabiola Iannarilli
  • Fabiola Iannarilli works on identifying drivers of species distribution and population dynamics at local and global scale. As a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Fabiola aims at assessing the impact of humans and domestic animals on the occurrence and activity patterns of mammals across Europe. Most of her recent work centers on new advancements in the collection, processing, and analysis of camera-trap data to inform wildlife conservation, monitoring and management. Fabiola is passionate about supporting collaborative approaches in ecological research. She coordinates Snapshot Europe, a collaborative, pan-European camera-trap project that surveys wildlife using standardized protocols, and is a co-lead in the Biodiversa+ project Big_Picture, which aims at integrating Europe’s camera-trap wildlife data using shared digital infrastructure, AI, and analytical tools to enable continent-scale assessments of species’ status for policy-making.
  • Location: University of Konstanz + online
  • Room: ZT702 + online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: refrat@ab.mpg.de
Over the past three decades, camera trapping has rapidly evolved into a central tool for wildlife monitoring and ecological research. Camera-trap data are nowadays widely used to quantify population-level metrics such as species occurrence, abundance, activity patterns, behavior, and reproduction ... [more]

Discover Fasnacht in Konstanz: Lake Constance’s Most Charming Chaos! / Entdecke die Fasnacht in Konstanz: Der charmanteste Ausnahmezustand am Bodensee

Discover Fasnacht
  • Date: Feb 9, 2026
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Common room 4.16
  • Host: Jenn Golbol
  • Contact: jgolbol@ab.mpg.de
Dear friends, Ever seen a pirate, a monk, and a giant furry “Seehas” dancing together by the lake? If not… welcome to Konstanzer Fasnacht! Join us for a fun and relaxed talk introducing Fasnacht—the joyful, slightly absurd, wonderfully noisy carnival tradition that transforms Konstanz every year. ... [more]

Next Career Steps in Academia – How the System Works and How to Navigate It

Institute Seminar by Daniel Piechowski
  • Date: Feb 3, 2026
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Daniel Piechowski
  • Location: Hybrid meeting
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Bücklestrasse + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: dpiechowski@ab.mpg.de
How do academic careers really work—and what does it take to move to the next stage? This seminar provides a clear, realistic overview of academic career paths for PhD students and postdocs. It explains how positions are funded, what is evaluated at different career stages, and why planning ahead ... [more]

Spider sleep – what we know and what we still dream of

Institute Seminar by Daniela Rößler
  • CANCELED
  • Date: Feb 3, 2026
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Daniela Rößler
  • Fueled by curiosity and a deep love of natural history, Daniela Rößler’s academic career began with the study of visual signals and anti-predator adaptations in amphibians before shifting to arachnids—focusing on the remarkable cognitive abilities of jumping spiders. During her postdoc, Daniela discovered a REM-like sleep state in spiders and, building on this finding, she established a research group that uses integrative field, lab, and comparative approaches to investigate the function, ecology, and evolution of sleep across the spider tree of life. Her overarching goal is to highlight the influence of sleep on behavior more broadly and across taxa—an often-overlooked dimension in behavioral ecology.
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Bücklestrasse + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: asaralkar@ab.mpg.de
Much remains unknown about the diversity and evolution of sleep in invertebrates. Recent findings reveal compelling evidence for REM sleep–like behaviors in jumping spiders, including retinal movements and limb twitches. These behaviors, observed in a visually guided lineage far removed from ... [more]
Poster of course

MPI-AB Behavioural Ecology Graduate Course

MPIAB Behavioural Ecology Graduate Course: Lectures and discussions on behavioural ecology topics
  • Date: Jan 29, 2026
  • Time: 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Alex Jordan, Caroline Schuppli, Andrea Flack, Kamran Safi, Brendan Barrett, Meg Crofoot, Serena Ding, Urs Kalbitzer, Ari Strandburg-Peshkin, Barbara Fruth
  • MPI-AB group leaders, directors, senior scientists
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB bücklestrasse 4.06
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Topic: Discussion and debate formats, lectures
  • Contact: ajordan@ab.mpg.de
During Winter semester 2025/2026 we are offering a graduate course in Behavioural Ecology. It will run every Thursday, beginning with a lecture followed by a discussion on three papers in the area. The 13-week course is open to all students and postdocs. [more]

Applying Tinbergen’s four questions to a conservation problem: Tolerance to humans in a social desert species

Institute Seminar by Oded Berger-Tal
  • changed location
  • Date: Jan 27, 2026
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Oded Berger-Tal
  • Oded Berger-Tal is an associate professor in the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. His research group is conducting rigorous behavioral research aimed directly at mitigating conservation and wildlife management problems and advising the conservation and management decision-makers in Israel and beyond. In the past few years, in addition to conceptually developing the field of conservation behavior, he is focusing on topics such as developing non-lethal behavioral interventions to alleviate human-wildlife conflict, examining the impacts of various aspects of noise pollution (including infra-sound) on wildlife, understanding the mechanisms of high-tolerance to humans in wild Nubian ibex, studying the impacts of tourism on wildlife, and investigating the behavioral differences between animals utilizing anthropogenic environments and their less anthropogenically-exposed conspecifics.
  • Location: MPI-AB Möggingen
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Möggingen + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: refrat@ab.mpg.de
Conservation behavior is the application of animal behavior knowledge and methodologies to help conserve species and ecosystems. In order to ensure that behavioral research can indeed be useful in conservation contexts, the choice of the study system and research question has to be made together ... [more]

Age-related movement behaviour as a window into population dynamics

Rado Seminar by Sofia Bolumar
  • Date: Jan 23, 2026
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Sofia Bolumar
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Bücklestrasse + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: ksafi@ab.mpg.de
Heterogeneity in individual performance drives changes in population size, resilience, and future trajectories, as differences in life-history tactics can shift sex ratio, age structure, and ultimately population growth. In many vertebrates, age structure is a fundamental driver of population ... [more]
Poster of course

MPI-AB Behavioural Ecology Graduate Course

MPIAB Behavioural Ecology Graduate Course: Lectures and discussions on behavioural ecology topics
  • Date: Jan 22, 2026
  • Time: 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Alex Jordan, Caroline Schuppli, Andrea Flack, Kamran Safi, Brendan Barrett, Meg Crofoot, Serena Ding, Urs Kalbitzer, Ari Strandburg-Peshkin, Barbara Fruth
  • MPI-AB group leaders, directors, senior scientists
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB bücklestrasse 4.06
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Topic: Discussion and debate formats, lectures
  • Contact: ajordan@ab.mpg.de
During Winter semester 2025/2026 we are offering a graduate course in Behavioural Ecology. It will run every Thursday, beginning with a lecture followed by a discussion on three papers in the area. The 13-week course is open to all students and postdocs. [more]

Behavior and Population Dynamics of Top Predators

Institute Seminar by John F. Benson
  • Date: Jan 20, 2026
  • Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: John F. Benson
  • I have conducted field research on wildlife populations across much of North America studying wolves, mountain lions, black bears, coyotes, moose, mule deer, bighorn sheep, elk, white sharks, and other species. I am motivated by a desire to inform the conservation of wildlife and wild places – and by a fascination with the natural world. My work combines population, behavioral, molecular, and landscape ecology as I attempt to understand factors influencing individuals, populations, ecological communities, and ecosystems. In my lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, my students, postdocs, and I conduct intensive field studies around the world, asking questions grounded in ecological theory and using quantitative approaches to achieve practical outcomes and contribute to basic ecological understanding.
  • Location: Bückle St. 5a, 78467 Konstanz
  • Room: Seminar room MPI-AB Bücklestrasse + Online
  • Host: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
  • Contact: lrosales@ab.mpg.de
Top predators play important roles in ecological communities and yet their populations are declining globally in response to a variety of human-caused stressors. Large carnivores persist in some contemporary landscapes dominated by humans, presenting challenges and opportunities for conservation and ... [more]

Bonobo Stories - Fotografien von Christian Ziegler aus dem Salonga Nationalpark

Ausstellung
  • Start: Jan 19, 2026 09:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • End: Apr 17, 2026 05:30 PM
  • Location: WissenschaftsForum, Markgrafenstr. 37, 10117 Berlin-Mitte
  • Topic: Open day
  • Contact: mpgberlin@gv.mpg.de
Eine Ausstellung des Max-Planck-Instituts für Verhaltensbiologie. Fotografien aus dem LuiKotale-Bonobo-Projekt und Informationsstationen zur modernen Verhaltensforschung, die heute digitale Methoden nutzt. [more]
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