Christoph Randler

University of Tuebingen | EKU Tübingen · Department of Biology

Numerous studies have shown a positive impact of nature on psychological restoration and on well-being, which, in turn, are related to life satisfaction. Previous studies were place based or episode assessments, usually in the field. Here, we studied bird-watchers at different levels of their recreational specialization, especially the factor commi...

Social aspects of birding have been rarely studied and birders are not a homogenous group. Different subcultures have been identified and addressed by the concepts of ‘birding specialization’ and ‘birding motivations’. We investigated social aspects of birding in combination with demographic variables and a special focus on a Big Day (aka birdathon...

Vertebrate alarm calls can signal danger, and often encode information about predator proximity. Some species of birds alter the number of notes of their alarm calls to reflect urgency, with high‐urgency alarm calls having more notes than low‐urgency calls. Not only do individuals perceive the urgency message encoded in the alarm calls of conspecif...

Many species of birds use alarm calls to signal information about predators, including the level of threat. Previous playback experiments suggest that the urgency response towards heterospecific calls is phylogenetically conserved, notably in the Paridae family. Using playback experiments conducted on European great tits (Parus major), we tested wh...

Background: This study addresses the effects of the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID- 19) restriction measures on sleep and bedtime habits of N= 637 German university students. Methods: The questionnaire was distributed online during two different time periods in 2020 (February 27–March 21) and in 2021 (February 27–March 27). The first data collection...

Heterospecifics eavesdrop on mobbing calls and respond with appropriate behavior, but the functional aspects are less studied. Here, I studied whether jays (Garrulus glandarius) eavesdrop on blackbird (Turdus merula) mobbing calls in comparison to blackbird song. Furthermore, it was studied whether jays provided with extra information about predato...

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Summary There are only a few validated chronotype and morningness-e...

Birdwatching is an increasing nature-related activity, with an important influence on data collection of citizen science programs. Initial involvement into a leisure activity is an important life event, but also of interest for nature conservation and citizen science projects. Here, we assessed the initiation into birding by an open-ended question....

Human-nature relationships are an important aspect of leisure research. Previous studies also reported that nature-related activities have a health benefit. In this study, we surveyed US-American birdwatchers at two time points during the COVID pandemic (independent samples). During the beginning of the COVID pandemic in spring 2020, we analyzed th...

Problem-solving and critical thinking are associated with 21st century skills and have gained popularity as computational thinking skills in recent decades. Having such skills has become a must for all ages/grade levels. This study was conducted to examine the effects of grade level, gender, chronotype, and time on computational thinking skills. To...

Birds underlie a predation-starvation risk, and foraging should show a diurnal/circadian pattern. Camera traps were used to study visitation patterns and discovery of a novel food source in woodland birds in SW Germany. A total of 18 species occurred at feeders with nine of them being exploratory species. Great Tits ( Parus major ) discovered novel...

Neben eher fachunabhängigen Emotionen (z. B. Langeweile, Wohlbefinden) treten bestimmte Emotionen wie Angst und Ekel im Biologieunterricht stär-ker als in anderen Unterrichtsfächern auf. In diesem Beitrag werden beide Ty-pen von Emotionen in den Blick genommen. Situationale Angst korreliert da-bei in verschiedenen unterrichtlichen Settings negativ...

Integrating multiple representations into a coherent mental model is one of the challenges when learning with multimedia. In this experimental study (N=173), we examined how highlighting corresponding information in text-graph learning material can help higher education students to make the necessary connections and improve learning outcomes in two...

Studying wildlife-oriented motivations is important for park design, citizen science projects, and avitourism. In previous work, motivations were modeled as social, achievement, and appreciation oriented components of wildlife-related motivations. The aims of this study were to test the components of this model with birdwatchers and to study any va...

Here, we researched the effects of the COVID-19 restriction measures on learning/work-related characteristics (working hours, creativity in problem-solving approaches/organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)) depending on chronotype of N = 681 German residents (mean age: 28.63 years, SD: 10.49 years). The data were collected with an online questio...

Citizen Science (CS) is a megatrend of the 21st century given its importance for nature conservation. CS projects dealing with birds often require knowledge and abilities to identify species. This knowledge is not easy to acquire and people often learn from leaders during field trips and lectures about birds. This emphasizes the need for leaders in...

Morningness-eveningness (M/E) is an important variable in individual differences and has an impact on many areas of life including general and mental health. In previous work eveningness has shown to correlate to personality disorders (PDs) and mental instability such as psychoticism, depression, and bipolar disorders. Therefore, a relationship bet...

Against the backdrop of preparing students for a digitalized future, supporting pre-service teachers' development of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) has become paramount in pre-service teacher education. Whether and how pre-service teachers' acquisition of TPACK could be supported is still an open question, as previous research...

The purpose of this study was to segment birdwatchers into clusters. Members from a wide range of bird related organizations, from highly specialized birders as well as Facebook bird group members were studied to provide a diverse dataset (n = 2766; 50.5% men). Birding specialization was measured with a battery of questionnaires. Birding specializa...

Monitoring of small nocturnal and arboreal rodents is difficult and often conducted using indirect techniques. Here, we measured the circadian activity of the fat dormouse (Glis glis) directly using camera traps. The study took place at the Spitzberg in SW Germany. Data were collected using six Bushnell Natureview cameras with a macro lens at baite...

Climate change and its consequences have called for actions to mitigate it, triggering society to act and speak out about sustainability policies. Movements like Fridays for Future (FFF) spread beyond the young people pressed for action to combat climate change. The present study aimed to (1) assess the environmental attitudes (EA) and knowledge (E...

During the COVID-19 shutdown phase in Germany, universities stopped presence teaching and students had to turn to digital instruction. To examine their capability to cope with the changed learning situation, we assessed how basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration, motivational regulation, vitality, and self-efficacy of 228 German biol...

Animal Welfare Attitudes (AWA) can be defined as the attitudes of humans towards the welfare of animals. Although AWA has been previously associated with demographic factors as gender, one of the main limitations is that few studies applied robust psychometric questionnaire scales. Moreover, some evidence of cross-cultural variations in AWA have bee...

Morningness-Eveningness Stability Scale improved (MESSi) is an assessment tool that evaluates distinctness of daily changes as well as the person's propensity for morningness and eveningness. The aim of this study is to evaluate psychometric properties of the Turkish version of MESSi and associations of chronotypes and diurnal variations with perso...

Purpose: Insufficient nocturnal sleep is a primary source of excessive daytime sleepiness. Most previous research has focused on the disparity between sleep demands and study start times in adolescents. Fewer studies have focused on elementary schoolchildren. We hypothesize that late sleep timing is connected to excessive daytime sleepiness in a s...

Biodiversity is declining, and knowledge about biodiversity declines in a similar way. Previous studies have already addressed predictors of species knowledge. Here, we studied bird species knowledge related to demographics, but also to individual differences in affinity to nature, by including (i) birding specialization and (ii) bird-related activ...

Birdwatching (birding) is a nature-based recreational activity, often including arising early in the morning. In the present study, we tested the effect of a negative social jetlag (SJL) in birders. Negative SJL implies that people have an even earlier sleep-wake rhythm on free days or weekends. As birds' activities start before or shortly after su...

Citizen Science (CS) projects are important for scientific research and for biodiversity conservation. In ornithology, citizen scientists make important contributions to biological conservation, because they have a highly developed knowledge about birds, making their data more valuable than those from lay persons. However, to make the data even mor...

Concerns about animal welfare are becoming increasingly important. Recent research suggests that age and gender are associated with attitudes toward animal welfare in adolescents. In this study, we analyzed attitudes toward animal welfare in adolescents from five geographic regions: Colombia, France, Germany, and two regions in India (Raipur and Ka...

Vertebrate species knowledge, a key factor for conserving biodiversity, is a compulsory part of school curricula. This study evaluated the vertebrate species knowledge of sixth-grade German grammar school pupils (aged 11-13) to investigate the influence of socio-demographic factors (gender, size of hometown, mother tongue), personal expectations (f...

Numerical competence—the ability to estimate and process the number of objects and events—is important during antipredator strategies because it influences individual's survival chances. Animals can benefit from numerical competence during mobbing—when a prey moves toward and vocalizes at or harasses a predator. Mobbing responses of some species ar...

Numerical competence—the ability to represent, discriminate, and process numerical quantity information—is a widespread cognitive ability in animals that influences survival and reproductive success. Little is known about the role of numerical competence during predator mobbing—when a prey moves toward and harasses a predator. Since being in a larg...

In birds, aggressive behavior can be elicited in the field with a simulated territory intrusion (STI). Here, we compared four different STI methods in nuthatches in the non-breeding season: playback only, playback combined with an inactive wooden model mounted on a robot device, playback and an active model mounted on a robot device, and playback w...

Simple Summary: Camera traps are now widely used in animal research because they can monitor animals continuously. Nocturnal mammals are particularly difficult to monitor, and identification without cameras would be difficult. However, camera traps can be improved. We here compared two experimental settings to increase detection and images taken of...

Background and objective In this study, we researched the effects of the COVID-19 restriction measures on the sleep health of N = 681 German residents (mean age: 28.63 years, SD: 10.49 years). Methods The data were collected with an anonymous online survey composed of validated questionnaires and additional questions to quantify changed circumstan...

Umfassende Orientierungshilfe für Praxis und Studium. 9. Auflage, völlig neu bearbeitet, 12., durchgesehene Auflage 2020).

The new corona virus infection SARS-CoV2 which was later renamed COVID-19 is a pandemic affecting public health. The fear and the constraints imposed to control the pandemic may correspondingly influence leisure activities, such as birding, which is the practice of observing birds based on visual and acoustic cues. Birders are people who carry out...

Students' intrinsic motivation has a crucial role in their learning. In this context, the intrinsic motivations of students should be taken into consideration in educational activities. In this contribution, the scale developed by Wilde et al. (2009) was adapted to Turkish Culture. This is an intrinsic motivation scale, which is an adapted, time-ec...

Chronotype influences the success of mate choice. Evening types reproducibly report higher mating success than morning types. In this study, we directly assessed the reasons for these advantages, hypothesizing the degree of choosiness a person has concerning mate choice being causal. A total of N = 1247 (male = 440/female = 807) heterosexuals parti...

Animals trade-off predation risk against feeding opportunities and prey species may use signals or cues of predators to assess predation risk. We analyzed the mesopredators pine and stone marten (Martes martes, M. foina) and nocturnal and diurnal rodents (Glis glis, Apodemus spp., Sciurus vulgaris). The non-experimental approach used camera traps a...

Tail flicking is a common behavior that can be observed in many bird species. Various studies have investigated this behavior in different contexts such as during foraging, social interactions, or during predator–prey interactions. Nonetheless, there has been no statistical synthesis of results concerning the most commonly hypothesized functions of...

Wolves (Canis lupus) were exterminated from most areas of western Europe during the last two centuries, but, during the last decades, wolves re-entered their previous distribution area in Germany. We compared secondary school students from within and outside a delineated wolf area, and analysed gender, age, and residency. A total of 254 students pa...

Birdwatching is a very popular and increasing leisure activity, and the study and observation of birds is more popular in the morning due to the greater activity among birds at that time of day. The aim of our study was to find out whether there was a relationship between the circadian preference of observers and their favourite bird species and wh...

This study aimed to validate the Morningness-Eveningness-Stability-Scale improved (MESSi) in Mexico, analyzing the factor structure and sleep habits, combined with the proposal of cutoff values for the scales, and to assess the relationship with substance use. We applied the questionnaires through an online survey to a total sample of 510 Mexicans,...

A late chronotype (or an owl) is someone who tends to go to bed late, so he or she will get up later. In contrast, morning types (larks) get up earlier and go to bed earlier. Men and women differ in their chronotype. Women are usually earlier chronotypes, who go to bed earlier and fall asleep earlier, and then get up a little earlier. Interestingly...

Da bisher eine umfassende Beschreibung der Avifauna des Spitzberges fehlt, wurde im Jahr 2018 eine halbquantitative Brutvogelkartierung auf 37 Rastern durchgeführt. Zusätzlich wurden Citizen Science Daten aus den Jahren 2012-2018 aus dem ornitho.de Portal für den Spitzberg verwendet. Am Spitzberg konnten 2018 zwischen 4100-4700 Reviere von 79 Brutv...

Viele Säugetierarten sind – im Gegensatz zu anderen Wirbeltieren wie z.B. den meisten Vogelarten –nachtaktiv, scheu und sie flüchten vor Menschen oder verstecken sich auf große Distanzen. Deshalb wurden Wildkamerafallen in fast allen Rastern des Spitzberges aufgestellt, eine Technik, die in dieser Art vor 50 Jahren noch nicht zur Verfügung stand. A...

The calling behaviour of Paridae species (i.e. titmice, tits and chickadees) in a predator-related context is well-studied. Parid species are known to alter call types, note composition or call duration according to predation risk. However, how these species encode information about a non-threatening context, such as food sources, has been subject...

This is some basic work which was displayed during the diabetes conference in Berlin 2019. Unfortunately - or happily - it is only available in German.

A valid and convenient method to measure animal attitudes contributes to feasible survey studies and to the evaluation of educational programs. There are established scales for measuring animal attitudes but only some have acceptable psychometric properties, others address only a small fraction of the constructs and some are overly long. We therefo...

Insufficient sleep could severely impair both cognitive and learning skills. More prominent changes are found in children and adolescents. Tools used to estimate sleepiness in the adult population are commonly inappropriate for children. The objective of our study was to provide a reliable instrument to measure excessive sleepiness for upcoming stu...

When facing a predator, animals need to perform an appropriate antipredator behavior such as escaping or mobbing to prevent predation. Many bird species exhibit distinct mobbing behaviors and vocalizations once a predator has been detected. In some species, mobbing calls transmit information about predator type, size, and threat, which can be asses...

Differences in daytime preferences can be described on the dimension of morningness-eveningness (continuous) or circadian typology (categorical) and are associated with our physiological functioning, which is reflected in body temperature and cortisol levels in the morning. The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationship between mo...

In science, graphs are used to visualise data, relationships and scientific principles. Basic graph reading operations, i.e. reading single data points, recognising trends as well as conducting small extrapolations from the data are important skills for pupils and lay the groundwork for a comprehensive understanding of data visualisations across al...

Following previous studies, chronotype was related to sexual attitudes and behavior. Evening people tend to be more promiscuous and follow short-term mating strategies and extra-pair matings (EPM), which might lead to a higher reproductive success. In this study, one aim was to assess reproductive success directly by asking for children, and, secon...

Das Praxisbeispiel oben wirft die Frage auf, wie und woran man denn den Erfolg einer solchen Nationalparkwoche messen könnte, oder auch die Wirkung der Umweltbildung im „normalen“ schulischen Biologieunterricht. Bei Temperaturmessungen haben wir Thermometer, bei Höhenmessungen ein Barometer, bei Ortsbestimmungen GPS-Werte. Gibt es etwas Vergleichba...

Chronotype is an individual difference trait that is closely linked to biological variables. Usually, men and women differ in their chronotype with men being more evening oriented than women. The aim of the study was to assess gender differences in chronotype based on a systematic review and meta-analysis. In addition, many recent studies do not re...

Objectives: The present study investigated sleep duration and sleep timing from infancy to early adulthood. Methods: A cross-sectional survey study of N = 18,323 participants (9004 female) from 0 to 25 years (M = 12.36; SD = 5.76) from kindergartens, schools and universities in SW Germany. Participants reported their usual bedtimes and rise time...

Many species are known to use vocalizations to recruit con- and heterospecifics to mobbing events. In birds, the vocalizations of the Family Paridae (titmice, tits and chickadees) are well-studied and have been shown to recruit conspecifics and encode information about predation risk. Species use the number of elements within a call, call frequency...

In this study, the relationships among empathic tendency and circadian preference on cyberbullying and cybervictimization of adolescents in Turkey were examined. The study group included 1540 adolescents (861 female, 679 male), and anonymous and voluntary participation was sought in forming the study group. Data were collected from each participant...

Differences in daytime preferences are mainly manifested in the variability of sleep and wakefulness. Circadian preference shows a great influence on health and daily routine. Further, circadian preference and chronotype changes throughout the life span. A wide-ranging determination of circadian preference is therefore important. This study present...

There are many anti‐predatory escape strategies in animals. A well‐established method to assess escape behavior is the flight initiation distance (FID), which is the distance between prey and predator at which an animal flees. Previous studies in various species throughout the animal kingdom have shown that group size, urbanization, and distance to...

1) Background: Conservation biology education is an important societal goal, targeting the worldwide promotion of biodiversity conservation. When learning about animals, direct experience poses an ideal opportunity to influence the participants' attitudes and knowledge. However, in the case of large carnivores, direct experiences are scarcely possi...

Assessing morningness-eveningness preferences (chronotype), an individual characteristic that is mirrored in daily mental and physiological fluctuations is crucial given their overarching influence in a variety of domains. The current work aimed to investigate the best factor structure of an instrument recently presented to asses this variable: the...

see our video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4rHV1GUMls&t=129s Case studies have a long tradition in biomedical research. Here, I will analyze an important person from a chronobiological aspect, Santa Claus. Although it might be dangerous for researchers to publish analyses about Santa Claus, because, given the possibility that he may be unsatisf...

The use of live animals in instruction plays an important role in biological education, with the intention that attitudes and emotions should be positively influenced. To date, studies in this field have given mixed results, and there has certainly been a lack of studies on student attitudes and knowledge of poisonous and venomous animals. This stu...

Diese Skala ist eine hergeleitete Kurzversion der PANAS. Das Original basiert auf Watson et al. 1988, in der deutschen Übersutzung von Krohne et al. 1996. Thompson (2007) entwickelte eine Kurzversion der PANAS. In dieser Version sind die items der deutschen Version zusammengestellt, die von Thompson als geeignet markiert wurden. Eingesetzt wurde di...

Diese Datei beschriebt die Herleitung der deutschen Items des rMEQ. Die Items sind im angehängten Dokument, die Zitierhinweise sind zu beachten.

Since the 1990s, the Two Major Environmental Value model (2-MEV) has been applied to measure adolescent environmental attitudes by covering two higher order factors: (i) Preservation of Nature (PRE) which measures protection preferences and (ii) Utilization of Nature (UTL) which quantifies preferences towards exploitation of nature. In addition to...

Circadian preference can be measured by a set of questionnaires. While accepting the biological correlates as a good convergent criterion, 10 researchers criticized currently used questionnaires because of their design, weighted number of items, unbalanced scoring or uneven Likert scales. This led to the development of a composite questionnaire, th...

Aim of the present study is an additional validation of the Morningness–Eveningness-Stability Scale improved (MESSi). We screened a total of 97 German students using the reduced Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire (rMEQ) to identify a subsample (N = 42) of definite morning and evening types (31% males, mean age: 24.8 ± 5.8 years). The participant...

Dieser Band richtet sich an Studienanfänger der Biologie und führt ein in alle wichtigen Themen der Verhaltensbiologie: Nahrungssuche, Partnerwahl und Fortpflanzung, Brutfürsorge und -aufzucht, Räuber-Beute-Beziehungen, Kommunikation und Sozialverhalten. Des Weiteren werden auch genetische und evolutionsbiologische Aspekte beleuchtet, die wichtigst...