Lysanne Snijders- PhD, Behavioural Ecology, https://lysannesnijders.com
- Professor (Assistant) at Wageningen University & Research
Lysanne Snijders
- PhD, Behavioural Ecology, https://lysannesnijders.com
- Professor (Assistant) at Wageningen University & Research
Assistant Prof @ Behavioural Ecology Group. Studying animal social behaviour, personality & conservation behaviour.
About
57
Publications
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Introduction
Passionate about the study of animal behavior, especially animal personality & social networks. Study taxa include birds, fish & mammals. Techniques include field observations & experiments, systematic literature review, personality assays, spatial tracking & video playback. I am also very keen to explore how considering behavioral variation may inform conservation actions & ethics. Songbird project: http://youtu.be/zy0HysxhQz0 & Guppy project: https://youtu.be/N9Z1Zai_eTg
Current institution
Additional affiliations
January 2020 - present
June 2018 - December 2019
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- I was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to work on personality and migration strategies in noctule bats.
March 2017 - present
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- I was granted an one year IGB postdoc fellowship. My research at IGB will focus on the social dynamic of Trinidadian guppies, both in the wild as in the lab. To stay updated, check: www.lysannesnijders.com
Education
February 2012 - April 2016
September 2009 - August 2011
September 2005 - August 2009
Publications
Publications (57)
Available for free until September 7: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VPTbcZ3WcX8r
Many animals preferentially associate with certain other individuals. This social structuring can influence how populations respond to changes to their environment, thus making network analysis a promising technique for understanding, predicting, and potentially man...
Individual foraging is under strong natural selection. Yet, whether individuals differ consistently in their foraging success across environments, and which individual- and population-level traits might drive such differences, is largely unknown. We addressed this question in a field experiment, conducting over 1,100 foraging trials with subpopulat...
Responding to the information provided by others is an important foraging strategy in many species. Through social foraging, individuals can more efficiently find unpredictable resources and thereby increase their foraging success.
When individuals are more socially responsive to particular phenotypes than others, however, the advantage they obtain...
Sociality is a fundamental organizing principle across taxa, thought to come with a suite of adaptive benefits. However, making causal inferences about these adaptive benefits requires experimental manipulation of the social environment, which is rarely feasible in the field. Here we manipulated the number of conspecifics in Trinidadian guppies (Po...
Integrating information on species-specific sensory perception with spatial activity provides a high-resolution understanding of how animals explore environments, yet frequently used exploration assays commonly ignore sensory acquisition as a measure for exploration. Echolocation is an active sensing system used by hundreds of mammal species, prima...
The human population is growing rapidly, increasing pressure on natural habitats. Suitable habitats for resident and migratory waterbirds are, therefore, more threatened. This study analyses how the presence of anthropogenic land cover (urban area and cropland) at multiple spatial scales affects the community composition of waterbirds along the Nil...
Migration is a life-history trait that shapes individual-by-environment interactions, affecting fitness. Currently, many species are changing their migration strategies, stressing the need to identify and better understand the behavioral correlates of migration. As a partial migrant, the noctule bat, Nyctalus noctula, allows for rare intra-specific...
Systematic evidence syntheses (systematic reviews and maps) summarize knowledge and are used to support decisions and policies in a variety of applied fields, from medicine and public health to biodiversity conservation. However, conducting these exercises in conservation is often expensive and slow, which can impede their use and hamper progress i...
All scientific research faces potential biases that threaten to undermine the validity and/or reliability of its results, potentially leading to misinterpretation of the findings. Although they can rarely be entirely avoided or eliminated, awareness and detection of potential biases is key to minimising, or at the very least, identifying, their inf...
Behaviour must be quantitatively assessed to answer scientific questions through statistical analysis. We can count or measure some types of behaviour relatively easily, but often behaviours are not easy to define or to distinguish from one another. In these cases, we need to establish clear and comprehensible definitions.
In animal behaviour research, a comprehensive understanding of how to handle your data and their statistical analysis is essential. Statistical tests allow you to draw scientific conclusions from your data. In this chapter we will discuss only some of the very basic aspects of data analysis.
Observing the behaviour of animals so often leads to the questions: “What?”, “How?”, “Why?”, “When?”, “Who?” and “Where?”. Through formulating such questions in a scientific manner, we generate hypotheses and predictions about their possible answers. Clear hypotheses, and the steps of scientific methodology based on them, are a basic foundation of...
The various considerations that must be taken into account before embarking on an animal behaviour study differ depending on whether the study is descriptive or experimental. In descriptive or correlative studies, the naturally occurring behaviour of animals is observed without influence from the researcher. In an experimental study, an experimente...
The use of tools is ubiquitous in modern animal behaviour studies. At minimum, behavioural observations are regularly recorded using a computer or tablet, and frequently also with audio and video recording devices. Other electronic tools are a prerequisite for recording and accessing certain behaviours for analysis.
Sustainable coexistence between wolves (Canis lupus) and humans primarily relies on the availability of effective mitigation practices to reduce livestock depredation by wolves. As a result of wolf recovery, domestic animal losses have been rising, despite the broad implementation of both lethal and nonlethal management efforts. This growing confli...
The human population is growing rapidly, increasing pressure on natural habitats. Suitable habitats for resident and migratory waterbirds are, therefore, more threatened. This study analyses how the presence of anthropogenic land cover (urban area and cropland) on multiple spatial scales affects the community composition of waterbirds along the Nil...
Global ecosystems are changing dramatically due to land transformation and climate change. Global change is a particular challenge for migratory animals that rely on multiple stepping stones on their journeys. Migratory animals have a range of strategies to accomplish this, but not all of these strategies may be appropriate for the challenges ahead...
Two is company, three is a crowd – but not for everyone. Animal group sizes vary considerably both across and within species. Explaining why this variation exists is a central question in sociobiology (Clutton-Brock, 2021; Rubenstein and Abbot, 2017). Social companions provide real perks; for instance, cooperative breeders share the costs of parent...
This chapter provides general operating procedures (GOPs) and guidelines for a variety of non-lethal techniques, which seek to interrupt, reduce or modify the behaviour of wildlife to decrease the occurrence of ‘unwanted’or ‘undesirable’behaviours. In Australia such methods are mostly employed for threatened species protection as part of introduced...
Resource availability and sociality are tightly coupled. Sociality facilitates resource access in a wide range of animal species. Simultaneously, resource availability may change sociality. However, experimental evidence for resource-driven social changes in the wild, beyond local aggregations at the resource, remains scarce. Moreover, it is largel...
Territorial animals often use signals to advertise territorial occupancy within their larger home ranges. Songbirds are among the best-studied territorial signaling taxa, and when competitors start singing during a territorial intrusion, residents usually show elevated spatial and vocal responses. These responses could be used by intruders and dist...
Modern wildlife management has dual mandates to reduce human-wildlife conflict (HWC) for burgeoning populations of people while supporting conservation of biodiversity and the ecosystem functions it affords. These opposing goals can sometimes be achieved with non-lethal intervention tools that promote coexistence between people and wildlife. One su...
Integrating information on species-specific sensory perception together with spatial activity provides a high-resolution understanding of how animals explore environments, yet frequently used exploration assays commonly ignore sensory acquisition as a measure for exploration. Echolocation is an active sensing system used by hundreds of mammal speci...
Sociality is a fundamental organizing principle across taxa, thought to come with a suite of adaptive benefits. However, making causal inferences about these adaptive benefits requires experimental manipulation of the social environment, which is rarely feasible in the field. Here we manipulated the number of conspecifics in Trinidadian guppies (Po...
Social relationships can have important fitness consequences. Although there is increasing evidence that social relationships carry over across contexts, few studies have investigated whether relationships formed early in life are carried over to adulthood. For example, juveniles of monogamous species go through a major life history stage transitio...
"Wildness concerns the degree to which individuals exists autonomously in evolutionary and ecologically functioning populations where genetic and phenotypic diversity enables natural selection to produce adaptation." (Child et al., 2019)
Baker & Winkler make a thought-provoking contribution to the discussion of what role captive animals could play...
Social bonds can have important fitness consequences. Although there is increasing evidence that social bonds carry over across contexts, few studies have investigated whether social bonds formed early in life are carried over to adulthood. For example, juveniles of monogamous species go through a major life-history stage transition, pair formation...
Background:
Birdsong, a key model in animal communication studies, has been the focus of intensive research. Song traits are commonly considered to reflect differences in individual or territory quality. Yet, few studies have quantified the variability of song traits between versus within individuals (i.e. repeatability), and thus whether certain...
Human–wildlife conflict (HWC), is currently one of the most pressing conservation challenges. We restrict ourselves here to wildlife behaviour that is perceived to negatively impact social, economic or cultural aspects of human life or to negatively impact species of conservation concern. HWC often involves wild animals consuming anthropogenic reso...
A comment on Thompson:
Shawn Thompson’s essay provides an inspiring and thought-provoking perspective on the legal fight for acknowledgement of the fundamental right to bodily liberty for autonomous species, in this case great apes. Thompson specifically calls upon science to assist the Non-Human Rights Project (NhRP) in their groundbreaking expli...
BioRxiv link to article: https://doi.org/10.1101/478537
When individuals are more socially responsive to one sex than the other, the benefits they get from foraging socially are likely to depend on the sex composition of the social environment. We tested this hypothesis by performing experimental manipulations of guppy, Poecilia reticulata, sex co...
Although examples of successful applications of behavioral ecology research to policy and management exist, knowledge generated from such research is in many cases under-utilized by managers and policy makers. On their own, empirical studies and traditional reviews do not offer the robust syntheses that managers and policy makers require to make ev...
Individual foraging is under strong natural selection. Yet, whether individuals differ consistently in their foraging success across environments, and which individual and population-level traits might drive such differences, is largely unknown. We addressed this question in a field experiment, conducting over 1,100 foraging trials with nine subpop...
Animal social networks and animal communication networks are key disciplines for understanding animal social behavior, yet these disciplines remain poorly integrated. In this review, we show how communication and social networks are inherently linked, with social signals reflecting and affecting social networks. Signals carry key information on the...
Signals play a key role in the ecology and evolution of animal populations, influencing processes such as sexual selection and conflict resolution. In many species, sexually selected signals have a dual function: attracting mates and repelling rivals. Yet, to what extent males and females under natural conditions differentially respond to such sign...
Social bonds can have important fitness consequences. Yet individuals often differ in how well they are socially bonded in relation to certain individual traits. We examined whether such traits relate to differences in social attraction. Using video playback in great tits, we demonstrate a causal effect of dominance and a contrasting relationship b...
Lay summary: Social bonds can have important fitness consequences. Yet individuals often differ in how well they are socially bonded in relation to certain individual traits. We examined whether such traits relate to differences in social attraction. Using video playback in great tits, we demonstrate a causal effect of dominance and a contrasting r...
Biotelemetry devices provide unprecedented insights into the spatial behaviour and ecology of many animals. Quantifying the potential effects of attaching such devices to animals is essential, but certain effects may appear only in specific or particularly stressful contexts. Here we analyse the effects of radio tag attachment on great tits (Parus...
To tweet or not to tweet: The role of personality in the social networks of great tits
By: Lysanne Snijders
Project video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy0HysxhQz0
When mentioning social networks it is easy to think of online networks for people, such as Facebook and Twitter. But many animals also have social networks. In proximity networks...
Propositions belonging to the PhD Thesis: To tweet or not to tweet.
Cover belonging to the PhD Thesis: To tweet or not to tweet
Expression of sexually selected signals in many species varies over time of day and season. A key model system to study this
variation in signal expression is birdsong. Yet, despite good ecological understanding of why song varies across time of day
and season, much of the individual variation remains unexplained. Although some of the interindividu...
Territorial animals settle territory disputes and discourage conspecific intrusion via close-range confrontations as well as nonconfrontational long-range signalling. Since individuals often differ consistently in general aggression and risk taking, the relative use of either close- or long-range territorial defence behaviour is likely to vary with...
A major advantage of group living is increased decision accuracy. In animal groups information is often transmitted via movement. For example, an individual quickly moving away from its group may indicate approaching predators. However, individuals also make mistakes which can initiate information cascades. How responsive should individuals then be...
For many animals, long-range signalling is essential to maintain contact with conspecifics. In territorial species, individuals often have to balance signalling towards unfamiliar potential competitors (to solely broadcast territory ownership) with signalling towards familiar immediate neighbours (to also maintain so-called "dear enemy" relations)....
In various animal species individuals differ consistently in their behaviour, often referred to as personality. In several species these personality differences also correlate with differences in social behaviour. This is important as the social environment is a key selection pressure in many animal populations, mediated, for example, via competiti...
In migratory geese, the extended association of parents and offspring is thought to play a crucial role in culturally transmitting the migration strategy to the next generation. Goslings migrate with their parents and associate closely with them almost until the next breeding season. Families do not break up until spring migration, when the parent-...
Questions
Questions (2)
Dear all, for a systematic map project on wildlife conditioning, we are looking for the following four full texts but haven't been able to find them. Can anyone help us out? Thank you! #HumanWildlifeConflict #Learning #Predation #Coexistence
· Gilbert, B. K., & Roy, L. D. (1977). Prevention of black bear damage to beeyards using aversive conditioning. In Proceedings of the 1975 Predator Symposium, University of Montana (pp. 93-102).
· Clark, R. G., Guyn, K. L., Penner, R. C., & Semel, B. (1996). Altering predator foraging behavior to reduce predation of ground-nesting birds. In Transactions of the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (Vol. 61, pp. 118-126). Wildlife Management Institute.
· Gustavson, C. R., Jowsey, J. R., Milligan, D. N., Sweeney, M. J., & Brewster, R. G. (1977, April). Taste aversion control of coyote predation in Washington, California and Saskatchewan. In annual meeting of the Western Psychological Association.
· Skarphédinsson, K. H. (1993). Ravens in Iceland: population ecology, egg predation in eider colonies, and experiments with conditioned taste-aversion. University of Wisconsin--Madison.
For an evidence synthesis my colleagues and I want to check specific internet pages and databases for relevant information. A comprehensive search would include many unique combinations of search terms. It would be very inefficient to enter all these combinations manually for each website and we would therefore very much like to know about good resources, like tutorials, about methods that would allow us to do this automatically (for exampla by using a script in R or Python)
