Conference Organisers
Dr Christine Beardsworth
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Netherlands
Christine is interested in the interaction between the individual-level and environmental factors that lead to movement decisions. She has studied how cognitive ability and personality traits are related to movement and habitat selection in gamebirds and shorebirds respectively. [google scholar].
Dr Ying-Chi (Ginny) Chan
Swiss Ornithological Institute, Switzerland
Ginny aims to understand causes and consequences of individual variation in animal movement, and how animals respond to rapid human-induced environmental change. She also explores ways to apply knowledge on animal movement to wildlife conservation. She has worked on local foraging movements and long-distance migration, and her current focus is on natal dispersal. Her study systems include threatened migratory shorebirds in East Asia and Australia and raptors in Europe. [website] [google scholar]
Dr Jolle Jolles
Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), Spain
Jolle’s work is focused on the role of individual heterogeneity in animal groups and its consequences across social and ecological scales. Using an individual-based approach, Jolle combines laboratory experiments, with field observations, and environmental monitoring to understand how animal populations cope with environmental change. In particular, he is currently setting-up a long-term research project to study how freshwater fish populations cope with severe droughts. Jolle is also known for pushing the use of low-cost, open electronics in the study of Ecology and Animal Behaviour.
[website] [google scholar]
Dr Francesca Cagnacci
Fondazione Edmund Mach, Research and Innovation Centre, Italy
Francesca is a behavioral and conservation ecologist with research emphasis on ecological and evolutionary determinants of animal behavior, movement, and resource use. In particular, she looks into the effects of climate change and human disturbance on animals’ spatial distribution and organismal interactions. She initiated and coordinates the bottom-up research consortium EUROMAMMALS, to study European terrestrial mammals at a large scale, and she has co-founded the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration- in partnership with the Convention for Migratory Species at the United Nations- to build a global inventory of this threatened behavior. Dr. Cagnacci also holds a deep interest in technology applied to conservation issues (biologging, data standards). She has recently co-initiated the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative, in the context of the International Bio-Logging Society.
[website] [google scholar]
Dr Myles Menz
James Cook University, Australia
Myles is interested in the movement ecology, particularly migration, of insects and the influence of migratory species on ecosystems. His research spans a range of fields such as community ecology, global change ecology, animal behaviour and conservation biology.