Clara

Social foraging is a common strategy used by animals to enhance food detection, while diminishing predation pressure. A key aspect of social foraging involves animals using social information in three steps: animals can (1) acquire information about a food patch, (2) approach it, and (3) exploit the food. However, individual differences (e.g., sex) may constrain which animals successfully complete each of these steps. For example, subordinates can be displaced from food patches, and thus may not be able to exploit a food source despite having knowledge of its location. In the long term, this between-individual variation in foraging strategies can have consequences for the species and broader ecological community. Currently, there is little known about how biases in social information use shape foraging strategies of wild animals. 

In my PhD project, I study great tits (Parus major) as a model species to investigate which individual factors facilitate the sharing and successful use of social information. Specifically, I focus on how dominance-related traits (i.e., sex, etc.) affect foraging strategies of wild great tits of the Westerheide population (Netherlands). I conduct fieldwork during the non-breeding season (autumn-winter). I combine different data collection methods to try and build a picture of how great tits forage: using RFID feeders to track their feeding behaviour, radio-tracking their movements and analysing their acoustic signals. Ultimately, this project aims to help behavioural ecologists understand how different individual characteristics shape the foraging strategies by which animals acquire enough food to survive in complex contexts.

Supervised by Lysanne Snijders (WUR); Co-supervised by Chris Tyson (WUR); Co-promotors: Kees van Oers (WUR/NIOO-KNAW) & Marc Naguib (WUR).