Internship: using camera traps to explore species interactions with beechnuts (tekst in het Engels)

Beechnuts, the seeds of European beech (Fagus sylvatica), are an essential food resource for a variety of species in the forest, such as wild boar (Sus scrofa), small rodents, and several bird species. Interactions between species and seeds, being it seed predation or seed removal, are well recorded in the literature, but this information comes from different locations and time periods. While this allows to build a theoretical species interaction network (i.e., meta web) of those interactions that could occur between species if they co-occur, realised interactions in an area of interest need to be verified by field observations.

In this internship project, we want to deploy several camera traps within our study site at the Hoge Veluwe National Park underneath beech trees to record realised interactions between beechnuts and seed consumers. This autumn will yield a high number of beechnuts, presenting good conditions to observe species interactions. The field work will take place in October (and potentially early November) and will involve planning the study design, deploying the cameras and regular checks of cameras (change of SD cards and batteries). Afterwards, the main work will include annotating the camera trap data to verify theoretical species interactions derived from the literature. Depending on the internship length this work can be supplemented by helping with some in-depth systematic literature review that is currently ongoing within the larger project this internship will be embedded in.

Besides the direct work on the project, you will be taking part in weekly departmental activities, such as seminars, science lunches and journal clubs.

Practical information

• This project should be an internship project and can be scaled to the requirements of your study programme.
• Start date: 15 September 2026 (1 October the latest)
• Duration: flexible, dependent on your internship requirements
• Location: Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Wageningen
• Working language: English
• Additional requirements: driver’s licence B (to drive to the field site)

If you are interested to work on this topic, please contact Cherine Jantzen directly (correspondence language English): c.jantzen@nioo.knaw.nl.