Behavioural
Ecology Group


Postdoctoral Behavioural Ecology Group





Niki Teunissen



Dr. Niki Teunissen is interested in why animals live and cooperate together in social groups, and particularly how the benefits of cooperation and group living might depend on social context. Her research combines intense field work with detailed observations and experiments on marked individuals followed throughout their life.


During her MSc at the University of Groningen, she studied interspecific competition between bird species in the Seychelles, and benefits of group living in purple-crowned fairy-wrens in Australia. She continued research on purple-crowned fairy-wrens for her PhD with the Behavioural & Evolutionary Ecology of Birds research group at Monash University (Melbourne), focusing on benefits of group living and helping behaviour to reveal why subordinate fairy-wrens help to raise others’ offspring and defend against predators.


Following her PhD, she continued working with purple-crowned fairy-wrens but this time shifting her research to a conservation focus, investigating environmental impacts on breeding success and survival. In July 2022, she joined the Behavioural Ecology Group at WUR to explore why individual fairy-wrens stay in a group or disperse – an important component of understanding group living in general.


Contact Niki

research interests



Much of my research has focused on understanding why subordinates cooperate with raising young and predator defence. But to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of sociality, we also need to understand how groups are formed in the first place. Therefore, my current research focuses on when and why individuals stay in a group or disperse, and how this affects their ultimate reproductive success. I use purple-crowned fairy-wrens as a model system for answering questions about sociality. These birds are cooperative breeders endemic to northern Australia. They inhabit and disperse exclusively along waterways rich in native Pandanus aquaticus palms. Young can either stay in their natal group until they inherit the breeding position, disperse to a breeding position nearby, or disperse long distances to a different habitat fragment, making them well suited for studying group living and dispersal.



Niki Teunissen


Postdoctoral
Behaviour Ecology group
Department of Animal Sciences
Wageningen University
Zodiac building

niki.teunissen@wur.nl


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