Behavioural
Ecology Group


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Phd Student Behavioural Ecology Group





Miriam Kuspiel



Miriam Kuspiel did her bachelor in biology with specialisation in behavioural and neural mechanisms at Bielefeld University. She chose the molecular ecology group in the behavioural biology department to deepen her knowledge in genetics for her bachelor thesis. Afterwards, she stayed in Bielefeld to do the master Behaviour: From Neural Mechanisms to Evolution. For her thesis, she investigated the relation between territory quality and aggressiveness in male blue tits in Vosbergen near Groningen, NL. In another research project involving fieldwork in the northeast of Brazil, she investigated complexity of call combinations in common marmosets under supervision of Meike Zemihn from Leiden University.


Since this project further ignited her curiosity in cooperative breeders, she set out to investigate benefits of helping in cooperatively breeding white helmetshrikes in Eswatini, under supervision of Sjouke Kingma, Marc Naguib and Kat Bebbington. Due to covid and the limitations in doing fieldwork abroad, however, she decided to switch the topic and investigate communication and anti-predator behaviour in Eurasian magpies instead.




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Research interests



Animal communication

Context & specificity of alarm calls

Social behaviour & cooperation

Evolution of cooperative breeding

Selective drivers of behavioural traits



Project overview


Alarm calls have become a major interest in the study of communication complexity in animals and the evolution of language. To investigate the function and specificity of alarm calls, we explore the context of calls in Eurasian magpies. Eurasian magpie breeders are year-round territorial and live in stable neighbourhoods. Their offspring leave the territory a few weeks after fledging to join flocks of non-breeders until they obtain a breeding position usually not before 2 years of age. Magpies are common in the Netherlands and breed all over Wageningen and the surrounding towns and fields. They may fall prey to raptors such as sparrowhawks and terrestrial predators such as foxes and cats, and are reported to mob these intensely especially when their offspring is around. They at least partially seem to use the same calls to defend their territory against conspecific intruders. We conduct a variety of experiments to explore context-specificity of, graded variation in and responses to calls in magpies.


If you are currently a student, and are interested in doing your thesis within this research line, feel free to contact me or check out the thesis opportunities here.


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Miriam Kuspiel



Phd Student
Behaviour Ecology group
Department of Animal Sciences
Wageningen University
Zodiac building
Room B0033

miriam.kuspiel@wur.nl


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