Education - dr. L (Lysanne) Snijders

Currently available student project

Effectiveness of animal conditioning interventions in mitigating Human-Wildlife conflicts

Type: Systematic literature review
Topic: We did a comprehensive search for publications potentially containing evidence on the effectiveness of animal conditioning interventions in reducing Human-wildlife conflicts. The next steps are to screen the studies for relevance and extract the relevant data, with the goal of making this evidence easily available for conservation practitioners and to conduct analyses on potentially key mediating factors of effectiveness in particular taxa.
Level: MSc
Requirements: Interest and ability to work systematically and motivated to sort through large sets of publications.
Start date: Flexible

Recommended reading:
Shivik et al 2003. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2003.00062.x.
Berger-Tal et al 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/ary130.
Snijders et al 2019. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13750-019-0153-7.
Domjan 2005. The Essentials of Conditioning and Learning.

Social foraging in guppies (Poecilia reticulata)

Type: Video analysis
Topic: For several years we have conducted social foraging experiments with individually-marked guppies in Trinidad and collected video data. The most recent field season was cut short by the Corona crisis but we were still able to collect videos for three different populations that still need to be analysed. From previous years we have already analysed videos available from a fourth population (under different experimental set-ups). Possible projects involve population comparisons in food detection and consumption or to investigate more detailed social foraging mechanisms (across populations).
Level: MSc or BSc possible
Requirements: Motivation to score behaviour from videos; Experience with or willingness to learn R
Start date: Flexible

Recommended reading:
Snijders et al 2018. https://doi.org/10.1101/260604.
Snijders et al 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13086.
Chouinard-Thuly & Reader 2019. https://doi.org/10.1101/786772.
Hasenjager & Dugatkin 2017. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2020.