Since childhood I have been fascinated by nature and want to understand the interrelationships and dynamics behind the wonders of the living world. I have a strong interest in, and passion for, the ecology, evolution and behaviour of wildlife. I want to know how interactions with the environment, different individuals, other populations and different species influence individuals and populations. Investigating the effect of anthropogenic and environmental change on ecosystems and thereby creating a foundation for science and conservation is one of my main motivations.
Project
For my PhD, I joined the wild dog team to work on the demography of this charismatic African predator. Read more on the wild dog project page.
Using a rich dataset spanning three decades and collected by the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust (BPC, now Wild Entrust), we aim to understand how the demography of the African wild dog is influenced by top-down effects of lions (the main competitor) and bottom-up effects of impala (the main prey). We use state-of-the-art Bayesian models to explore these relationships and hope that this will aid the development of robust conservation measures.
CV
- Since 2024, PhD Student, Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland
- 2022–2023, Research camp manager, Kokolopori Bonobo Research Project
- 2022, Seabird research assistant Farallon islands, Point Blue Conservation Science
- 2020–2021, MSc Student, Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland
- 2015–2020, BSc Student, Biology, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Publications
- Bierhoff, L., Bond, M. L., Ozgul, A., & Lee, D. E. (2024). Anthropogenic and climatic drivers of population densities in an African savanna ungulate community. Population Ecology, 1–20. doi:10.1002/1438-390X.12182
Office Y19-M-88
Email (@uzh.ch) lukas.bierhoff