Are you currently finishing your MSc and looking for an internship or research practice opportunity within the Behavioural Ecology group? Click here to get a list of current and previous internship/research practice examples, as well as a contact list for new internship/research practice opportunities. Click here to get an overview of the internship positions provided via the university.
Internship Project: *International fieldwork internship*
Investigating human-commensalism in Passer sparrows
Myself (Rowe, Melissah M.Rowe@nioo.knaw.nl) and my PhD student (Ruth Fawthrop) are looking for a motivated Master student to join us in Kazakhstan to work with the Bactrianus house sparrow. Details of the project are available here: https://nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies/international-fieldwork-internship-investigating-human-commensalism-in-passer-sparrows
BHE contacts:
Marc Naguib (marc.naguib@wur.nl)
Kees Van Oers (K.vanOers@nioo.knaw.nl)
Internship Project: *International fieldwork internship*
Human Social Foraging (Ice fishing)
The Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin is recruiting a student for a research internship/thesis project within a DFG funded research project that investigates human foraging behavior in a novel study system: Ice-fishing. Ice-fishing has a long and rich tradition in the Nordic countries and evolved from subsistence foraging to popular sports competitions.
In this project, we investigate individual and collective foraging of icefishers in Finland using GPS logging devices to record high resolution spatial search behavior and head-worn cameras to identify behavioral states during search (e.g., drilling holes in the ice, relocating between resource patches, angling and catching fish).The following video gives an impression of the fieldwork and data collection: Icefish highlights.
During the project, the candidate will assist in labelling the recorded videos with the respective behavioral states, potentially developing tools to automate the video analysis and work with high-resolution spatiotemporal data to understand individual and collective movement dynamics of human foragers in naturalistic environments.
The project will be supervised by a research scientist (Dr. Ralf Kurvers) and a PhD student (Alexander Schakowski) at the institute within an interdisciplinary research group. Internships typically last 10 to 12 weeks and are reimbursed with 430 Euros per month (full-time internship). Thesis projects are not reimbursed.
The preferred starting date is April 1, 2023, but others dates are possible.
Your Profile
Ideally the candidate completed undergraduate studies in biology, psychology, cognitive science, computer science or related fields and has experience working with spatiotemporal data and common statistical programming languages (e.g., R).
Your Application
The Max Planck Society strives for gender and diversity equality. We welcome applications from all backgrounds. The Max Planck Society is committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourages applications from such qualified individuals.
To apply, please send a (i) short statement of research interest, (ii) a curriculum vitae and (iii) relevant diplomas as a single PDF file to Dr. Ralf Kurvers (kurvers@mpib-berlin.mpg.de). For more information, please contact Alexander Schakowski (schakowski@mpib-berlin.mpg.de) or Dr. Ralf Kurvers (kurvers@mpib-berlin.mpg.de).
