News

News from the Population Ecology Research Group: new papers, fieldwork, people and events.

Popular-science accounts of our research, written by members of the group.

Protecting Adult Giraffes Is Key to Stabilizing Populations in Serengeti

The giraffe, one of Africa’s most iconic animals, is facing a crisis. Despite their worldwide popularity, giraffe populations in the wild are declining due to illegal killing and…

May 13, 2025

Avoiding Density Stress with Larger Ponds

By Benedikt Schmidt (translated from the original post on Swiss Biodiversity Forum) Conservationists are happy when there are many tadpoles in a pond. Yet at high density, tadpoles…

Mar 27, 2024

Alpine common toads breed on average a month earlier than 40 years ago

Animals that reproduce once a year during a short breeding season need to get the timing right. Breed too early and the offspring might be exposed to harsh conditions, breed too…

Mar 11, 2024

African Savanna Antelopes Need Habitat Space for Resilience to Climate Changes

New research shows that for antelope populations in East Africa, it is not just about the weather but where they can roam. This highlights why we need big, connected spaces for…

Mar 1, 2024

Rising Rainfall, not Temperatures, Threaten Giraffe Survival

Giraffes in the East African savannas adapt well to warmer temperatures. However, they are threatened by increasingly heavy rainfall.   Climate change is expected to cause…

Jul 3, 2023

Climate change threats to a short-lived primate

Climate change alters temperature and rainfall patterns, particularly in tropical environments, resulting in consequences for the persistence of wildlife populations. However, the…

Mar 29, 2023

How People, Food, and Water Affect Large Herbivore Distribution In East African Savannas

To survive, animals must find nutritious food and drinking water—sometimes during long dry seasons or cold periods—and at the same time avoid being eaten. Plant-eating mammals with…

Jun 15, 2022

Leaving by Staying: Dispersal Decisions of Young Giraffes

Dispersal, the process where animals reaching sexual maturity move away from family, is important for maintaining genetic diversity and is key to the long-term persistence of…

Sep 20, 2021
 

How to deal with the growing wolf population in Switzerland?

The newspaper NZZ am Sonntag recently published an interview with our in-house predator specialist and movement ecology group leader Gabriele Cozzi about the current wolf situation…

Sep 9, 2021

The African Wild Dog: An Ambassador for the World’s Largest Terrestrial Conservation Area

Nice and easily accessible summary of the latest paper on African wild dog dispersal and connectivity across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area.  

May 20, 2021

Giraffe Social Communities are Important to Giraffe Populations

Female Masai giraffes live in distinct social communities of up to 90 other friends, and although areas used by these ‘girl gangs’ often overlap, they have very different rates of…

Apr 8, 2021

Friends Matter: Giraffes that Group with Others Live Longer

Adult female giraffes who spend time in larger groups with other females live longer than less sociable individuals. The effects of sociability on survival outweigh other factors…

Feb 10, 2021

A collaborative success story – how tourism can help research and benefit from it

Over the past few years, as part of a collaborative effort between the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and the Botswana Predator Conservation (BPC) and supported by the Botswana…

Jul 22, 2020

Bird diversity in the Swiss Alps in decline

~ Press Release ~ The diversity of bird communities in the Swiss Alps is declining more and more, a joint study of the University of Zurich and the Swiss Ornithological Institute…

Jul 15, 2020

The impact of climate change on marmot survival differs between seasons

~ Press Release ~ Many animals have evolved life cycles and strategies (patterns of survival and reproduction) in line with predictable seasonal variation in environmental…

Jul 7, 2020

Biomechanically aware behaviour recognition using accelerometers

Accelerometers, Ground Truthing, and Supervised Learning Accelerometers are sensitive to movement and the lack of it. Accelerometers are not sentient and must recognise animal…

Jun 11, 2020

Human presence weakens social relationships of wild giraffes

A new study by an international team of scientists from the University of Zürich, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz, Pennsylvania State…

Jun 10, 2020

Upcoming Workshop: Spatial Dimension in Animal Management and Conservation

“…The scope of the workshop is to investigate several aspects of animal movement and spatial use and to relate them to newest challenges in wildlife management and conservation…”…

May 12, 2020

Baby Giraffes Hide in Bushes from Natural Predators but Have a Mixed Relationship With People

Masai giraffes are the world’s tallest herbivores and beloved by people around the globe, but were recently classified as an endangered species by the International Union for…

Aug 28, 2019
 

About Dogs and Conservation

Here is a three-minute video clip that explains our wild dog dispersal project At present only in Swiss German, the English version will follow soon. For now, if you do not…

May 29, 2019

Another recognition for a PopEcol member

Big congratulations to Dechen. Her poster on the dietary habits of snow leopards in Bhutan got selected among the best posters at the Biology19 conference that was held in Zurich…

Feb 25, 2019

Sometimes they disperse alone…

Our ‘little earth man’ Nino, (please pass me the translation from the German form, Erdmännchen), has done it! He has left the natal group. Nino has successfully…

Jan 8, 2019

The walk of life: African wild dog dispersal and what it means for management and conservation

The African wild dog is Africa’s most endangered large carnivore and is listed as endangered in the IUCN Red List. Fewer than 6,000 free-ranging individuals survive in the wild and…

Jan 4, 2019

Unstoppable

Well done team wild dog for two additional awards! The Vectronics Aerospace photo contest 2018 and the British Ecological Society photography competition 2018, in the category…

Nov 30, 2018

New year old habit - An additional award to a Popecol member

Congratulations to Dominik for winning the prestigious Southwood Prize of the British Ecological Society for the best paper by an early career researcher. His paper, published in…

May 1, 2018

The Doctors Trio

We left behind quite an exciting couple of weeks. PopEcol fledged its first cohort of PhDs. Tina, Sam and Koen successfully defended their four years of research and received their…

Dec 10, 2017

On the Trail of Giants: Population Ecology of Giraffes in Tanzania

“Kuna twiga pale,” I say in Swahili to our driver Meshak. There are giraffes over there. My partner Dr. Derek Lee and I stand side-by-side in the back of our Land Cruiser, its top…

Nov 22, 2017
 

Sarah Bänziger wins a prize for her master thesis

Sarah Bänziger won the “Forschungspreis 2017” awarded by Hintermann & Weber AG for her master thesis. Congratulations! For details, please see…

Nov 17, 2017

The Sixth Bio-Logging Symposium, Konstanz - Through the Eyes of an Engineer II

A personal account of #BLS6 by Pritish Chakravarty (who is also the recipient of the most exciting award ever!) The work field biologists do and the places they do it in blow my…

Oct 2, 2017

Tracking down an African wild dog den

The winter months of June, July, and August mark the coldest period of the year in Northern Botswana. It is this cool period that African wild dogs choose for whelping, as pup…

Sep 13, 2017

Amphibian Conservation Research Symposium

Last week, I headed off to the University of Canterbury in the UK to present at the Amphibian Conservation Research Symposium. This is the fourth year that I’ve attended this…

Jul 5, 2017

Shrinking whales and warning signals

As with, I suspect, an embarrassingly high number of scientific papers this one was conceived over a mug of something warm and caffeinated, but unlike most of my other publications…

Jun 22, 2017

Hopp Residuals!

Our formidable team of biodemographers and associates, The Residuals, conquered yet another 114km-long SOLA race around Zurich. Big thanks to our captain, Omar, for the great…

May 7, 2017
 

Popecol group retreat 2017

The Popecol annual group retreat is over for another year. Which is probably for the best. If you are interested in what happens when a bunch of scientists go away to the mountains…

Mar 16, 2017
 

Movement Ecology Summer School - August 2017

It is our pleasure to announce the 2017 Movement Ecology Summer School (MESS) organised through the Life Science Zurich Graduate School, PhD Ecology Program. The MESS will be held…

Mar 14, 2017

Where can the wild things roam? Combining ecological suitability and human acceptance for the Swiss wolf.

About one third of the Swiss landscape offers suitable wolf habitat. Nonetheless, there is only a small fraction thereof where the wolf is tolerated by local communities. Those…

Feb 17, 2017

BUSS 2016

written by Megan My name is Megan, and I was an intern in this lab over the summer in the Biology Undergraduate Summer School, or BUSS program. That’s a very simple way of summing…

Jan 16, 2017

Grimm’s enchanted forest - Gabriele about his work on bears and wolves

As researchers and conservationists, a key component of our work is to make our research findings accessible to everybody and engage with the general public. This is particularly…

Dec 19, 2016

Triple congratulations to Dominik

A series of congratulations to Dominik on three wonderful achievements! First and foremost, he managed to persuade a wonderful lady, Regula, to tie the knot. We wish them a long and…

Oct 24, 2016

Another winner!

  Big congratulations to Agnes for winning the shared prize for the best student presentation at the 13th International Seabird Group Conference (2016) in Edinburgh for her…

Sep 14, 2016

PopEcol Retreat 2016

This year, our group retreat was in Ticino. It involved ten group members, climbing up 1000m from Mergoscia to Cimetta, staying overnight at the top, and coming back down the next…

Apr 28, 2016

Kalahari – Through the Eyes of an Engineer

by PRITISH CHAKRAVARTY Having lived my entire life in the Northern Hemisphere amidst humans, it was with a heady concoction of childlike enthusiasm and amazed disbelief that I made…

Feb 23, 2016

A Month of Inspiration

Written by Billur Bektaş As an undergraduate student at the Istanbul Technical University from the molecular biology and genetics department, my journey in the field of ecology…

Oct 15, 2015

It was a great MESS - Movement Ecology Summer School 2015

The second Movement Ecology Summer School, organized by the Ozgul group as part of the PhD Program in Ecology of the Life Science Zurich Graduate School, has been a great…

Sep 10, 2015
 

The CMR Curse

An epic adaptation of the downfall rant to the capture-mark-recapture world. This was prepared for the retirement symposium of Dr. Jim Nichols, one of the most influential…

Aug 13, 2015

Board games for conservation management

As a PhD student in ecology, I always thought of my interest for board games as a mere hobby without any connection with my work. A field course in conservation management…

Jul 14, 2015

Popecol group started to form postwomen and postmen

Do Swiss people support or oppose wild living wolves in Switzerland? Do wolves encounter a positive “human environment” in areas with suitable habitat conditions? To answer these…

Jun 10, 2015

And the winner is …

… Sam Cruickshank! Sam won the prize for the best student talk at the Amphibian Conservation Research Symposium (ACRS) with his talk: ““Testing whether conservation action…

Apr 13, 2015
 

Movement Ecology Summer School 2015

On the basis of the success obtained in 2013, our group, and in collaboration with the Life Science Zurich Graduate School, is proud to announce the upcoming Movement Ecology…

Feb 3, 2015

Turkish Bears and the McDonald’s effect

“…The bears living in the Sarikamis Forest National Park belong to an isolated and relict population not connected to any other larger and viable bear populations…”.…

Nov 8, 2014

Our Marmot Research Project in the News!

Sep 15, 2014

Good bye, Raluca!

After one year as a SciEx postdoctoral fellow in the population ecology and the amphibian conservation biology groups, Raluca Bancila returns to Romania. We greatly enjoyed having…

Aug 3, 2014
 

Workshop Announcement: Fitting Flexible State-Space and Hierarchical Models Using the Laplace Approximation and Automatic Differentiation

I, Mollie, am organizing a workshop here at the University of Zurich. I’ve recruited two experts to come help me teach: Hans Skaug (Dept of Mathematics, Univ of Bergen) and…

Jul 21, 2014

The search for rotifers continues

“Thank you”, I whispered in a soft voice while driving by the rayon and plating factories surrounding Lake Orta. “Thank you for giving me a PhD”. The wastewater of those factories…

Jul 16, 2014

Thinking hard and digging deep is facilitated by isolation

‘Think hard and dig deep, without being canalized by the ideas of others published in literature. Not very often do you get a chance like this offered to you. Take the…

Jun 23, 2014

Second field season started at the Alpine Marmot Project

Welcome back to the Natural Reserve of La Grande Sassière where the second field season on alpine marmots started 3 weeks ago. Whereas last year at the same period there was deep…

Jun 9, 2014

Attendance ‘Bayesian population analysis using WinBUGS’-course

‘Don’t feign to be stupid.’ This well-chosen phrase of Marc Kéry introduced some of our group members to the world of Bayesian Statistics (where the use of your previous knowledge…

Jan 20, 2014

Take your time, settle down, if you want you can…return

Well, sometimes it is about fathers and sons, but sometimes it is also about sisters and unrelated males to find each other and settle down… Three months after the beginning…

Dec 24, 2013

Gabriele receives the ZGZ Prize for Nature and Environmental Protection

This Tuesday, Dr. Gabriele Cozzi gave a public talk at the Zurich Zoological Society about his PhD work on wild dogs, hyenas and lions in Botswana, and in collaboration with the…

Dec 12, 2013

If everything else fails, try Triops

Sometimes Science is nothing more than checking assumptions. This holds true whether you are a theoretical biologist (e.g. checking model assumptions), experimental biologist (e.g.…

Dec 2, 2013

Team shot

A rare opportunity for a group & affiliates photo. Taken during the apero following my inaugural talk, the reason why I am dressed like a bible salesman.

Nov 14, 2013

Are the marmots fat or muscled?

While some are tracking meerkats in South Africa, others are developing complex models in Zurich, I was doing laboratory work at the “Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert…

Nov 11, 2013

When Claude meets Charles…

“Claude Bernard and Charles Darwin, two geniuses from 19th century, initiated each in their own way and from disjoint areas, the contemporary biological revolution. Physiological…

Nov 11, 2013

Well begun is half done

After 5 weeks spent in South Africa it is time to draw the first conclusions regarding our new-born project on dispersal in meerkats. I do not want to sound presumptuous but I feel…

Nov 10, 2013
 

Rotiferella

Here’s a beautiful “studio” shoot of our laboratory’s cover girl, Rotiferella, taken by Stefan using a stereomicroscope. This is a mictic female of…

Nov 4, 2013

Tied to two females and more will follow… - Preparations for rotifer resurrection ecology

Today I felt like going on a first (blind) date: being nervous and excited at the same time. Or perhaps this is more what marriage feels like: eager to be tied to your partner(s)…

Nov 4, 2013

Arpat’s Antrittsvorlesung

Our Lab is proud to announce Arpat’s “Antrittsvorlesung” (inaugural lecture), which will be held Monday, 11 November 2013 at 5 pm at the University of Zurich. I…

Oct 31, 2013

Mollie Attended an ADMB Developers’ Workshop in Iceland

This photo has nothing to do with the workshop. I did some hiking after the workshop and found this huge boiling cauldron of water in the land of fire and ice. The landscapes were…

Oct 20, 2013

Moving forward – Animal Movement Ecology Summer School

The last week of August could not have been more hectic and inspiring for some of the people of our lab. The first Animal Movement Ecology Summer School held at the University of…

Oct 3, 2013

Necklaces for the girls, cars for the boys - Preparations for the first meerkat field season

Cable tie and epoxy instead of diamonds My name is Maag – Nino Maag, and I am about to start my PhD in the Population Ecology lab. During my study, I will investigate dispersal…

Oct 3, 2013

Meet the Rotifer Family

As from Thursday onwards, we are now part of the Family of Rotiferologists. This will be the most important family to deal with in my coming PhD years. Arpat, Stefan and I were…

Sep 28, 2013

Evrimle matematiğin ne alakası var?

“What’s evolution got to do with math?” This is an article I wrote (in Turkish) on the mathematical analysis of microevolutionary process, focusing on demography,…

Jul 26, 2013

First field season accomplished at the Alpine Marmot Project

If this picture makes you think that it is a holiday place, it is not… This is the nature reserve of La Grande Sassière (45 ° 29′N, 6 ° 58′E), located in the Alps where I spent the…

Jul 26, 2013

Bear project - Second field visit to Turkey

At the beginning of May, at the end of the winter, which on the mountains of north-east Turkey lasts unexpectedly long, it was finally time to go into the field and check on the…

Jun 11, 2013
 

Animal Movement Ecology Summer School

Our group is proud to announce the upcoming Animal Movement Ecology Summer School held at the University of Zurich (August 26–30 2013) and for which we already secured the…

May 15, 2013

Preliminary work at the Kalahari Meerkat Project

After an exhausting and… interesting (I believe this is the politically correct term) road trip Arpat and I finally arrived at the Kalahari Meerkat Project research station along…

May 15, 2013

A gerbil riddle

I received an interesting email from a geologist, also a close family friend. While researching for a road project at the Kazakhstan-China border, he became curious about the…

May 14, 2013

Mollie Brooks, our new quantitative ecologist

We have a new quantitative ecologist joining our ranks, Mollie Brooks, who is a recent PhD graduate from University of Florida, Gainesville. Fresh out of Ben Bolker’s group,…

May 2, 2013

Ekolojinin arka bahçeleri

“Backyards of ecology” This is an article I wrote (in Turkish) on the importance of long-term ecological research, focusing on two exemplars from US and UK and…

Apr 21, 2013

New headquarters

We just got the keys to our new headquarters. Too clean and empty… let’s see how long it will take us to transform it from this hospital-like look to a…

Mar 1, 2013

Eco-evolutionary Dynamics Workshop in Leiden

This week, Cindy and I participated in the “Eco-evolutionary Dynamics in a Changing World” workshop at Lorentz Center, Leiden. The organisers, Stephanie Jenouvrier,…

Feb 19, 2013

Gabriele receives the Claraz Research Grant

Congratulations to Gabriele for receiving the well-deserved Georges und Antoine Claraz Donation for his brown bear project in north-eastern Turkey. Yet another bear will be…

Feb 18, 2013

1000+ new group members, the Brachionus rotifers

Our first rotifers, algae, lab equipment and chemicals have finally arrived, and Dr. Diego Fontaneto came over from Institute of Ecosystem Studies (Verbania) to teach us how to…

Feb 15, 2013

Cindy receives the AXA Research Fellowship

Congratulations to Cindy Canale, for receiving the prestigious and well-deserved AXA Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for her project on adaptive responses of Alpine marmots to…

Feb 2, 2013

Jérôme Guélat, our new GIS specialist from Vogelwarte.ch

A warm welcome to Jérôme Guélat, who is starting his PhD degree in February. Jérôme’s PhD is an exciting collaboration with Dr. Marc Kéry from the Swiss Ornithological…

Jan 11, 2013

Luca Börger’s visit

This week, we hosted an academic visitor, Dr. Luca Börger, an animal movement ecologist from the Centre for Biological Studies, Chize. Luca’s research on animal dispersal focuses…

Dec 21, 2012

Cindy Canale, our new eco-physiologist

Together with Dr. Aurelie Cohas and Prof. Dom Allain (University of Lyon), who have been working on an Alpine marmot population in the French Alps for over 20 years, we have been…

Dec 11, 2012

Stefan Sommer, our new rotifer meister

Many long-term studies on larger vertebrates provide us with only a single time series to study population dynamics. To test all the interesting hypotheses arising from these…

Dec 5, 2012

Luis-Miguel Chevin’s visit

This week, we hosted Dr. Luis Miguel Chevin, an evolutionary biologist from the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology at Montpellier. Luis studies contemporary evolution,…

Nov 12, 2012

Gabriele Cozzi, our new movement ecologist

Gabriele Cozzi, an almost-done PhD student in the Schmid Group, came to my office one day with a bunch of stinky GPS collars and asked me if we could make any use of these. Couple…

Nov 11, 2012
 

Lilian Dutoit, our new & much needed admin help

We have the first member of our group: Ms. Lilian Dutoit. A research group (especially in the Swiss system) cannot function without someone to tell us what’s what! Lillian is…

Oct 11, 2012

A new beginning!

After a few busy months of settling in a new country and academic environment, our new research group finally started to shape up. This website/blog is launched with the aim of…

Sep 11, 2012
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