Behavioural
Ecology Group


Assistant Professor Behavioural Ecology Group







Lysanne Snijders



Lysanne Snijders is interested in exploring the group- and population-level consequences of behavioural variation. During her MSc thesis in 2009 at Wageningen University & Research (WUR), she investigated parental care in partial migratory geese for which she was granted the Alfred Russel Wallace Award by the Resource Ecology Group. Early 2012, she started her PhD with the Behavioural Ecology Group of WUR and NIOO-KNAW, to study the role of personality in the social networks of great tits. Following her PhD, which she defended cum laude in 2016, she continued studying social network dynamics, this time in wild Trinidadian guppies at the Leibniz-IGB (Berlin), supported by an IGB-Postdoc Fellowship. In 2018, she started her research on personality and partial migration in wild bats at the Leibniz-IZW (Berlin), supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoc Fellowship, but also continued at the IGB, supported by a Klaus-Tschira Boost Fund grant. In 2020, she returned to WUR to explore the social foraging dynamics of wild guppies, supported by an NWO-Veni Postdoc Fellowship. For her early-career research, she was awarded the 2020 Niko Tinbergen Award by the Ethologische Gesellschaft. Since April 2020, Lysanne is an Assistant Professor at the Behavioural Ecology Group of WUR.


Besides studying animal behaviour, Lysanne likes to inspire people with facts and stories about the amazing ways animals behave. In 2016, she was a lecturer for our MOOC on animal behaviour, free to participate for everyone.


Contact Lysanne

research interest





Currently, my core research focusses on the Trinidadian guppy, in which I study the link between social behavior and foraging success in the wild (see movie). Due to their small size and their naturally plastic spatial and social life, Trinidadian guppies offer the best of both worlds. We can causally test social factors (such as group size) by conducting group-level manipulations and we can disentangle effects of the immediate environment by doing translocations, all without trading off the ecological relevance.


I am also passionate about exploring the various ways that behavioral ecology can contribute to wildlife conservation. At the moment, I am mapping the evidence for the effectiveness of animal conditioning interventions in reducing Human-Wildlife conflicts, in collaboration with WWF-NL. Systematic evidence synthesis does not only have the potential to contribute to policy and management decisions, it also facilitates a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of animal behavior principles.



Lysanne Snijders



Assistant Professor
Behaviour Ecology Group
Department of Animal Sciences
Wageningen University
Zodiac building
lysanne.snijders@wur.nl


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