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Thesis opportunities



Internship opportunitites



Student Career Services



Information for students



Thesis opportunities at Behavioural Ecology Group



Interested in doing your BSc / MSc Thesis or internship at the Behavioural Ecology group?


BSc / MSc Thesis

If you have a passion for studying wild animals in their natural environment, please browse through the selection of our current thesis topics (tip.wur.nl), have a look at the various research topics within our group, or contact our staff directly.

Check below for a small selection of the thesis opportunities within our group:


Project 1: Eco-acoustics for nature-positive food production

Project 2: Linking Social Competence & Cognition in a Cooperatively Breeding Fish

Project 3: Bimodal dispersal strategies in black wheatears - radiotracking wild birds (fieldwork in Spain)

Project 4: Functional Diversity of Birds in the Neotropical Region

Project 5: Investigating Referential Alarm calls (fieldwork in Brazil)

Project 6: The Cinderella-effect: Do stepparents have a negative effect on individuals?

[comparative study]

Project 7: Cooperation, dispersal, and climate adaptation in Australian fairy-wrens

Project 8: Do predators make prey smarter?

Project 9: Cat personality and anticipatory behaviour

Project 10: Animal cognition: dogs' understanding of human knowledge

Project 11: Does duck feeding change the social behaviour of coots in winter?

Project 12: Effectiveness of animal conditioning interventions in mitigating Human-Wildlife conflicts (meta-analysis)

Project 13: Great tit (Parus major) personality in space



Field projects


Your thesis can both be done in the Netherlands or abroad!

With current international travel policy, we specifically look for MSc students for our larger international field projects in

- Brasil (Lined Seedeaters; Filipe Cunha),

- Brasil (Ecoacoustics project; Filipe Cunha),

- Trinidad (Guppies, Lysanne Snijders),

- Egypt (Waterbirds; Marc Naguib),

- Tenerife (Parrot cognition, Marc Naguib),

- Spain (Black wheatears; Gretchen Wagner),

- Australia (purple-crowned fairy-wrens; Niki Teunissen),

- Eswatini (Social Savannah Project, Sjouke Kingma),

- Australia (Zebra finch, Marc Naguib),

- New Zealand (Stitchbird, Marc Naguib).


We are also specifically looking for BSc and MSc students for our various field and labwork projects in Wageningen:

- social behaviour with Magpies (contact Sjouke Kingma),

- cognition and cooperative breeding in cichlids (contact Elizabeth Phillips),

- cognition and personality traits in the great tit (contact Kees van Oers).



Other projects with external collaborators:

Project: Wat zijn de effecten en risico’s van neonicotinïden voor de Nederlandse natuur en specifiek voor vleermuizen?

Project: Wat zijn de effecten en risico’s van glyfosaat voor de Nederlandse natuur en specifiek voor vogels?

(collaboration with the vogelbescherming, Dutch only)

Click here for more info.

Or contact:

Janske.vandeCrommenacker@vogelbescherming.nl en/of frans.vanalebeek@vogelbescherming.nl





Internship and Research practice opportunities



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).





Student Career Services



Did you know that Student Career Services helps WUR students with finding an internship?

Student Career Services give training on how to find an internship and can help you 1 on 1 to find an internship via their extensive network. They also give trainings about how to make a CV, a motivation letter, LinkedIn, how to pitch yourself and network.

Click here to see how to start your internship search.

Also, they organise Career days to get in touch with your possible future internship/job provider. See the following links for financial support projects for your internship abroad:

  • Erasmus+ Grants
  • Internships in the Valley
  • Dutch2USA Internship Program

Are you an external student and interested in doing an internship at WUR, please contact Student Career Services. If you have any questions about your MSc internship or MSc research practice, contact Bonne Beerda.


Brightspace page
Guidelines MSc



Information for students



You are currently doing your BSc or MSc abroad, and you want to do your thesis with us?


We welcome students from abroad to join us and start their internship/thesis with us.

Find here all the relevant information to start your thesis within WUR !


University registration

University requires registration and has some requirements for incoming students. Here you can find some useful links to apply for a thesis at Wageningen University:


Partner Universities - WUR

Check here whether your university has an exchange agreement with Wageningen University.


Incoming students - WUR

Here you can find the Student Exchange Brochure 2022-2023, as well as other relevant information for incoming students.


Admission Requirements - WUR

Check here all the admission requirements to the Erasmus+ and NON Erasmus+ Exchange Program.


Important information for Non-EU students



Erasmus+ Program

The Erasmus+ program allows you to study abroad and helps you to cover the costs. You can find here the exchange agreements between your home university and Wageningen University:

What is Erasmus+?

Erasmus+ grant for study exchange



If you found an interesting project and fulfilled the requirements, you can now directly contact the Departmental Exchange Coordinator (lifesciences.studentexchange@wur.nl), as well as one of the supervisors of our group to start planning your internship/thesis.


We hope to see you very soon!






You are currently doing your BSc or MSc thesis within the Behavioural Ecology group?


Stay connected !

Students at WUR can enroll in the Thesis Behavioural Ecology course. There you can find the links to the biweekly Thesis Peer meetings and all documents and forms needed to successfully complete your thesis/internship with us at BHE.

All students are highly encouraged to join the Thesis Peer meetings.

By enrolling in the course, you will also automatically subscribe to the BHE student mail list. You can double-check your enrolment on the Brightspace “Thesis Behavioural Ecology” / communication /classlist.


Thesis information

Make sure to carefully read the BHE Thesis and internship Guide to ensure you are aware of the general setup of a thesis. You can also find the guide on Brigtspace / Content.


Contact person

For general information about our thesis topics and doing your thesis with us, please contact Bonne Beerda (bonne.beerda@wur.nl).


Brightspace page
Guidelines MSc

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