Christoph Randler

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• Professor
• Professor (Full) at University of Tübingen

Motivational variables are becoming one important focus of research into birdwatching. However, previous research mostly lacks examining externally determined motivation, although this research suggests that such qualities of motivation exist. To address this research gap, we first developed an instrument to investigate different self-determined an...

The COVID-19 pandemic severely influenced human behavior due to governmental restrictions. In addition to administrative restrictions, other factors, like historical disease prevalence and culture might impact on recent behavior. The parasite stress theory of values and sociality predicts an influence of historical diseases on human culture and may...

Being outdoors benefits both humans’ physical and mental well-being, but the reasons for this connection are difficult to pinpoint. This study examines 40 recreational areas to understand their individual characteristics’ impact on mental well-being. We interviewed 1184 visitors on their perception of the place and feeling of mental well-being. In...

Willingness to donate and to protect (WTP) is an important part of worldwide nature conservation, and animals can be used as flagships for establishing conservation measures and collecting donations. We here focus on 141 German bird species to address factors that impact WTP by using a survey on the individual respondent level. Further, another ana...

The decline of Earth's biodiversity highlights the crucial role of knowledge about species in understanding ecological interdependencies and supporting conservation efforts. This study assessed bird species identification skills among 1752 students (46.4% boys, 51.9% girls, 1.1% diverse) in grades 4-12 from different school types, focusing on 30 sp...

The significant role of social media in our daily lives is undeniable. Here, we study the relationship between outcomes from the uses and gratifications theory of social media in relation to a growing outdoor-related leisure activity: birding (or birdwatching). The con-ceptualisation of birding specialisation is addressed, thus drawing on two well-...

Summary. A kite Milvus sp. with some features of the extinct Cape Verde Kite Milvus milvus fasciicauda, which was observed at Lacacão Sewage Pond on Boavista, Cape Verde, on 13 August 2023, may have been this taxon or a Red M. milvus × Black Kite M. migrans hybrid.

Chronopsychological research typically applied the morningness-eveningness dimension , resulting in a distinction between morning, intermediate, and evening chrono-types. However, in recent years, new measures have been developed that transcend the traditional "morning larks" vs. "night owls" dichotomy and better capture the complexity of individua...

While the association between sleep-related variables and academic achievement is widely acknowledged , limited attention has been directed towards exploring non-cognitive predictors of academic achievement such as conscientiousness and self-regulation. In this study, we investigated the relationships between various sleep-related factors (circadia...

In the face of accelerating biodiversity loss, there is a need for widespread public support for conservation efforts. To increase the understanding of biodiversity issues, researchers suggest beginning with the acquisition of species knowledge. However, to optimally support the successful acquisition of species knowledge, influencing factors must...

Birding as a non-consumptive, nature-related outdoor activity is becoming increasingly popular. Here, using an online survey of Australian birders, we focussed on birding as a construct of recreation specialization and considered three aspects: perceived level of skill/knowledge, behaviour, and involvement. We analysed demographic effects (age, deg...

Many studies have reported poor school achievement in evening persons and general circadian fluctuations in cognition. The aim of this study was to analyze circadian fluctuations in a cross-sectional design and examine the effects of chronotype on situational emotions and intrinsic motivation. A cross-sectional survey study was conducted in three T...

This study aimed to investigate the synchrony/asynhrony effect on eyewitness memory. Forty-four participants (24 evening-types and 20 morning-types) performed, individually, two online sessions: one in the morning and another in the evening. In each session, each participant visualized two videos (crime and neutral scenes), answered questions relat...

Bird identification is a necessary skill for citizen science projects, and teaching and learning about species is essential to halt the decline in biodiversity. Here, we investigated bird species knowledge in a case study of Michigan high school students using an online survey. Participants were asked to identify 21 common species, covering a wide...

Background The worldwide ecological crisis, including global climate change, is leading to increased awareness and attitudes towards environmental problems. To address these problems, studies of human attitudes are needed. This study is based on the 2-Major Environmental Values (2-MEV) model, which measures two components of environmental attitudes...

Camera traps are a powerful tool to monitor the activity pattern of species over long time periods. Camera data can be used to analyze activity patterns of or temporal niche partitioning among species. Temporal niche partitioning plays an important role for species coexistence and is under constant evolutionary pressure from predator-prey relations...

Many bird species defend their territories against conspecifics during the breeding season. Although some temperate species have been observed to defend territories outside of the breeding season, such cases are rarely noted in the literature, and it remains largely unknown which environmental factors influence such behaviour. In this study, we inv...

Human dimensions of birds are becoming increasingly popular. One aspect is charismatic species and their impact on nature conservation, and the other is the positive impact of birds on human well-being. Studies exploring these relationships are mostly based on species richness, but specific species traits are usually not studied. Here, we propose t...

Field trips provide real-world learning opportunities in biology education as they promote knowledge about nature among other things. As biodiversity is declining knowledge of species is important for understanding and appreciating the natural world and its implications. Many field guides are digitally available, but differences from traditional bo...

Personality traits and recreation specialization are related to an individual’s satisfaction with life. In addition, previous research has identified relationships between personality traits and recreational specialization. However, little is known about the interrelationship of the two variables in relation to life satisfaction. In this study, we...

Travelling to special places to observe birds is becoming an important niche in ecotourism. Here, we addressed differences between birdwatchers and non-birders to gain insight into the different needs (satisfaction, psychological restoration, and place attachment) at the same locality and during the identical time period at eight birdwatching sites...

Camera traps are increasingly used to estimate the density of animals as well as their activity patterns. As camera traps allow monitoring of animals over long periods of time without disturbance, they are especially useful to observe changes in diurnal activity patterns over time. In ornithology, camera trapping is still in its infancy. To our kno...

Simple Summary Knowledge about species has been surveyed many times in research in the past. To our knowledge, species selection has never been properly justified and there is no consensus on which species should be used as a baseline for knowledge about species in the public. Based on database analysis and two expert panel studies, a list of 50 bi...

Birdwatchers contribute an immense amount of data to citizen science databases. Thus, birding is important from the leisure perspective and from nature conservation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we studied birdwatchers on a global scale in over 50 countries by applying the model of behavior change, which focuses on changes in opportunity (spatial,...

Occupational stress and burnout are widely encountered among many healthcare professionals, including nurses and doctors, as well as among members of other professions. For example, nurses, who have disrupted circadian rhythms, are seen to have sleep problems. In addition, their personality traits are also considered to be related with burnout. Thi...

Background and objective This study aimed to evaluate the sleep patterns of students and employees working onsite versus those working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic using actigraphy. Methods A total of 75 students/employees (onsite: N = 40, home-office: N = 35; age range: 19–56 years; 32% male; 42.7% students, 49.3% employees) were studie...

Urban and suburban green and blue spaces are important places for human recreation, and the impact of biodiversity on psychological and recalled restoration has received much attention. This study addresses the relationship between bird species richness and restoration in a controlled field experiment (guided bird walk) applying a battery of indivi...

Morningness-eveningness refers to individual differences in the sleep-wake cycle. Research indicates that morningness-eveningness is associated with the Big Five (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness) and the Big Two (alpha-stability, beta-plasticity) personality factors. However, the latter has not ye...

Here we examined the possibility of a relationship of sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) with chronotype in a German-speaking sample of N = 1807 (1008 female, 799 male) with a mean age of 47.75 ± 14.41 y (range: 18-97 y). The data were collected using an anonymous online questionnaire (Chronotype: one item of the Morning-Evening-Questionnaire, as...

All over the world, educational science outreach programs in which students can perform laboratory work have been developed. A common goal of these programs is to counteract students' decreasing motivation in STEM education. In Germany, several outreach science labs have been established over the last 20 years. It is assumed that the characteristic...

Studies about charismatic bird species have been carried out using the general public; among the most common charismatic attributes are body mass and coloration. However, research on birders as a target population is lacking. Birders are people who identify bird species based on visual or acoustic cues. It is important to study this group directly...

Simple Summary The Earth’s biodiversity is currently declining rapidly. To counteract this loss, it is important to create awareness of nature and the environment in society. According to scientists and conservationists, the basis of such awareness is knowledge of animal and plant species. This study investigated the level of species knowledge of s...

Recreation specialization postulates that people progress through a career when engaging in a leisure activity. This has been studied by cross-sectional and few panel studies, but both methods have some shortcomings. Here, I studied German birdwatchers from the 16 federal states of Germany by employing the propensity score matching method. Data wer...

Weather importantly affects leisure, especially outdoor activities, like birding, which can be recognized as serious leisure. Outdoor attractive and feasible activities throughout the year, also in adverse weather conditions, are extremely sought after by therapists and leisure organizers. Then, we asked 388 Polish birders how their activity was re...

Recreationists differ in their engagement, specialization and involvement in their leisure activity. Recreation specialization can be seen as a continuum from the novice to the highly advanced (or as a career process), sometimes grouped into three or four categories. Within the highest category of advanced recreationists, a specific hard-core, elit...

Introduction Birding has become a widespread, nature-related outdoor leisure activity. However, birding motivation has received little attention in research on this leisure activity so far. Since previous work showed some inconsistencies that are based on different measurements and concepts, the current study aimed at unifying and broadening the co...

Simple Summary The experience of nature is different for everybody. Some studies used perceived biodiversity as an approach to measure the biodiversity of a location. This present study assessed if laypeople could estimate bird species richness at specific places in southwest Germany. We compared their assessment with bird counts of professional or...

Birding specialization can be measured alongside a continuum from the beginner to the specialist. The structure of birding specialization has three dimensions: (1) skill/knowledge, (2) behavior, and (3) psychological commitment. We tested the factorial structure and factorial invariance of the birding specialization scale in traditional and simplif...

Citizen Science (CS) projects are an important aspect of scientific data collection and biodiversity conservation. In ornithology, various CS projects exist, and even laypersons can contribute, but advanced birdwatchers also spend considerable time and effort in data collection. Here, different CS projects for birders were analyzed and compared wit...

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...

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...

In this study, we sought to explore the association between sleep/wake habits and the Dark Triad (DT) traits. The sample consisted of 637 university students who filled out the measures of the Dark Triad, sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, and sleep timing. There was a positive relationship between the Dark Triad composite and eveningness, and a ne...

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...

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...

Citizen Science projects are continuously growing in popularity as they offer a unique possibility to conduct large-scale research projects as well as allow citizens to broaden their knowledge about the research topic or the process of scientific investigations. However, the benefits for participants vary, depending on the way and the amount of par...

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...

There are only a few validated chronotype and morningness–eveningness questionnaires for adolescents. We evaluated three such questionnaires, namely Morningness–Eveningness Stability Scale improved; reduced Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents; and Composite Scale of Morningness in adolescents against actigraphy. Fifty...

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....

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 t...

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...

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...

Simple Summary 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...

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 sam...

Simple Summary Biodiversity is declining around the world and knowledge about biodiversity declines in a similar way. In this study, we addressed predictors of species knowledge, i.e., the question of what influences or causes species knowledge. The focus was knowledge about common bird species in Germany. Data were collected from July to October 2...

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...