Nelleke Buitendijk (AnE): 'Disturbing barnacle geese: How does lethal and non-lethal disturbance of barnacle geese influence agricultural damage?'
Abstract: In the last few decades goose populations and damage attributed to geese has increased a lot. A form of management to limit this damage is to chase the geese away in some areas, while leaving them to forage in others, thus concentrating damages. This study looks at the effectiveness of disturbance as a management approach, by identifying the effects of disturbance on habitat choice, behaviour and physiology of geese and relating this to expected agricultural damage.
Morgane van Antro (TE): 'Plasticity, Inheritance and Epigenetics: Can these be linked ?'
Abstract: This projects aims to investigate how the dynamics of DNA methylation (including plasticity to environmental factors, transgenerational stability) differs between plant species with different life history traits (mainly reproduction mode). This will be achieved by comparing a wide range of species through the usage of a recently developed technique known as epiGBS. epiGBS allows for genome-wide comparison DNA methylation analysis and can be applied for species for which no reference genome is available.