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.
Miriam is currently writing a Post-doc proposal.
