Annual NVG meeting 2023 and PhD workshop
Egmond aan Zee
Wednesday 22nd November – Friday 24th November
The 2023 NVG meeting will be held from Wednesday November 22nd to Friday November 24th in conference hotel ‘Zuiderduin‘ in Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands.
The program, including a timetable for all talks, can be found here: NVG Program 2023.
Registration is now closed.
Scholarship
Note that this year we offer Lucie Burgers NVG Conference Scholarship for Master students to support their participation in the meeting:
Are you an MSc student who would like to attend the 2023 NVG conference? Thanks to funds provided by the Lucie Burgers Stichting, we can award 10 MSc students with a scholarship of 200 euros to help cover conference fees. To be eligible, you must:
- Be an MSc student
- Present either a talk or poster
- Have the approval of your supervisor to attend and present
- Confirm that your research group/institute has no other funds available to help pay for your conference fees
To apply, register for the conference and upload your abstract and tick the box confirming that you are eligible to apply for the funds.
Deadline for applications: 01-11-2023. Results will be announced by 04-11-2023.
And there is more good news! Stichting formation aims to support woman at the start of their scientific careers (MSc, PhD or postdoc abroad) and offers travel grants to subsidize conference attendance or scientific exchanges to the Netherlands. They have an upcoming application deadline on October 2nd. Please visit their website for more information on how to apply.
Annual meeting information
The meeting starts on Wednesday evening, after the PhD workshop and will go untill Friday afternoon. Highlights of this meeting are the keynote lectures, including the Brill Baerends Lecture and the Dobberke lecture for which internationally renowned behavioural biologists are invited. This year the Dobberke Lecture (Wednesday evening) will be presented by Prof. Melanie Dammhahn. On Thursday, the Brill Baerends Lecture will be presented by Prof. Eva Ringler. Keynote lectures will be given by Prof. Anne Peters, Dr. Edwin van Leeuwen en Dr. Marion Nicolaus.
There is ample space for everyone to present, we always try to fit most of the talks into our program.
Speakers
Eva Ringler (University of Bern, Switzerland)
What amphibians can teach us about the evolution of parental care
Eva Ringler completed her doctorate on the mating system of a poison frog Allobates femoralis at the University of Vienna (Austria) in 2011. Thereafter she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Vienna and the University of California Los Angeles (US). Eva Ringler worked on a variety of topics within the field of Behavioural Biology and Ecology, including parental care, animal personalities, developmental plasticity, life-history decisions and olfaction/communication, typically using amphibians (or lizards) as a model species. In 2020, Eva became Assistant Professor and Head of the Division of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Bern (Switzerland, successor of Michael Taborsky), where she in addition and together with her research team started to work on cognition and adaptive decision making in social contexts as part of two SNSF funded projects.
Melanie Dammhahn (University of Münster, Germany)
My niche: evolution and ecology of individual behavioural difference
Melanie Dammhahn is a behavioural ecologist and since 2022 Professor for Behavioural Biology at the University of Münster. After obtaining her PhD on variation in social systems of mouse lemurs, Malagasy primates, in Göttingen (Germany), she studied behaviour and ecology of various mammals in Madagascar, Canada and Germany. Her research interests are at the interface between behaviour, ecology and evolution. Specifically, she studies patterns and determinants of among-individual (co)variation in behaviour, physiology and life-history and their consequences for ecological interactions within and between species. Some projects also aim to illuminate drivers and limits of behavioural responses to human-induced rapid environmental change at key eco-evolutionary levels of variation (individual, population, community).
Prof. Anne Peters (Monash University, Australia)
Multi-level social structure and cooperative behaviour in small songbird
Dr. Edwin van Leeuwen (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
The scope of culture in non-human animals: a primatological approach
Dr. Marion Nicolaus (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
Eco-evolutionary consequences of dispersal syndromes
PhD workshop
The PhD workshop will be held on wednesday the 22nd of November from 10h00 to 17h15. The goal of the workshop is to facilitate contact and discussion among PhD students in behavioural biology. There are about 25 PhD students and 2 senior researchers, all of whom will be present throughout the day. The workshop is organized by Dr. Christian Tudorache and Dr. Felipe Cunha.
This year’s workshop will be led by the two invited speakers, Prof. Dr. Eva Ringler and Prof. Dr. Melanie Dammhahn.
The workshop consists of two main parts:
- The speakers will introduce the yearly topic, How to Stay Motivated in Science, based on their own expertise and experience. Based on these presentations, the participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and exchange ideas, together with the speakers, during a Q&A session.
- After the lunch break, Dr. Bawan Amin will give a short Introduction on Open Science, its opportunities, and pitfalls. The participants together with the speakers will then prepare and conduct a Balloon Debate on eminent questions regarding Open Science.
The program at a glance:
10:00 Introduction to the Workshop (Christian Tudorache)
10:15 How to Stay Motivated in Science (Melanie Dammhahn and Eva Ringler)
11:15 coffee and tea
11:30 Q&A and Public Discussion
12:30 lunch break
13:00 An Introduction to Open Science (Bawan Amin)
14:00 Preparation for Balloon Debate (in groups)
16:00 coffee and tea
16:15 Balloon Debate
17:15 End