Academic Staff Member in Animal Behavior

Academic Staff Member in Animal Behavior

(full time, E 13 TV-L)

Topic: Investigating remote tag attachment mechanisms for wild primates

Reference No.: 2024/243. The start date is 15.01.2025. This position is available until 31.12.2025. The position can be divided into two part-time positions.

The University of Konstanz is one of eleven Universities of Excellence in Germany. Since 2007 it has been successful in the German Excellence Initiative and its follow-up programme, the Excellence Strategy.

This project is led by Caroline Schuppli, Alison Ashbury, Shauhin, Alavi and Brendan Barrett based at the Center for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior at the University of Konstanz in partnership with the Development and Evolution of Cognition Research Group and the Department of the Ecology of Animal Societies at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany.

We are looking for an Academic Staff Member (i.e., with Master) to investigate remote mechanisms to attach GPS tags to wild primates. The goal of the project is to develop tagging techniques that do not require capture, contact, or physical restraint of wild animal study subjects.

The candidate will investigate different vectors to attach tags onto the animals as well as adhesion mechanisms to keep the tags attached to the animals. This includes developing and piloting, different materials and mechanisms of attachment, attaching devices on dummies and eventually testing the technique on live targets, including captive primates.

Whereas this project has a high potential to lead to publications on the development of the tagging technique, actual data collection on wild primates is not planned during the here advertised initial phase of the project. If successful, the initial phase of the project will be followed by an implementation phase where the developed tagging technique is applied to primates in the wild to answer questions about movement and interindividual spacing, and there may be an opportunity for the candidate to continue on with the project.