dr. H (Hugo) Loning

I am a behavioural biologist with a strong interest in how evolutionary pressures shape the vocalisations of animals. I love working on animal sounds, because they can be so accurately recorded and subsequently quantified using computational approaches. For example, I programmed a digital zebra finch ear to listen to transmitted recordings to discover that the detection distance of zebra finch song is only about eight meters. Additionally, I am very interested in how we can use individually distinct sounds to learn more about individual-level survival, reproduction, movement and social interactions. For example, using just their individually recognisable songs, I constructed the communication network of a wild population of over 160 zebra finches. You can find my papers on Google Scholar.

Student opportunities: do you also get excited about animal sounds? Do you have 1) attention for detail and either 2a) some programming skills which you’d like to develop further, and/or 2b) excitement about doing fieldwork? Feel free to contact me. I supervise BSc and MSc students each year.

I am board member of the Netherlands Society for Behavioural Biology and member of the Dutch Birdsong Network.

Research questions I work on:

• How do sounds mediate the social organization of wild zebra finches? – work in collaboration with Marc Naguib (Wageningen University) & Simon Griffith (Macquarie University, Sydney), see this news article or this Dutch radio interview (at 1:43:00).
• Can we automate the detection of individual animals from audio streams? – work in collaboration with Aneesh Chauhan (Wageningen Research), see this blog article.
• Can birdsong reduce the impact of anthropogenic sound stressors such as airplane noise? – I co-supervise PhD-candidate Rodrigo Vassallo in collaboration with Martijn Lugten & Arjan van Timmeren (TU Delft).

Education:

• PhD at WUR & Macquarie University (cum laude) on wild zebra finch communication with Marc Naguib (WUR) & Simon Griffith (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) at UNSW arid zone research station Fowlers Gap.
• MSc Biology at WUR, thesis on light pollution effects on bats with Kamiel Spoelstra (NIOO-KNAW), research internship on Neotropical frog microhabitat acoustics with Wouter Halfwerk (VU Amsterdam) at STRI Gamboa, Panama.
• BSc Biology at Leiden University (cum laude), thesis on noise masking in songbirds with Hans Slabbekoorn & Katharina Riebel.