Female and male songbirds sing equally elaborate songs in some species, but in others, females do not sing like males or not at all. How did such pronounced differences in male and female communication evolve?

For a long time, bird song was considered as a typical male trait. But over the last twenty years, research has shown that a lot of female songbirds sing as well. Female scientists turned out to be the key factor in these findings, amongst others from the Institute of Biology Leiden.

What invertebrates are available to feed nestlings in an agricultural landscape of varied complexity?

Does the presence of Ring-necked parakeets negatively influence feeding and feeding behaviour of native bird species on artificial bird feeders and if so, what are possible solutions?

For some time blackbirds have been settling in towns as well as in woods. As a result, town blackbirds have now begun to develop differently from their counterparts in forests. These are the findings of the PhD research carried out by behavioural biologist Erwin Ripmeester who defends his dissertation…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo

The oldest university in the Netherlands was founded on 8 February 1575 in the Pieterskerk in Leiden. This was at the time of the Eighty Years’ War with the uprising of the northern provinces against domination by the Spanish.

A study in the Behavioral Biology group of Carel ten Cate at the IBL showed that experience-dependent and -independent preferences influence song learning in zebra finches.

We study the link between the acoustic, behavioral and physiological health of birds and prominent pollution factors. We aim to explore causation through experimental studies on detrimental factors like traffic noise, particulate matter and chemical toxins. Our primary target is scientific progress…

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh, C.J.M. Musters

How is it possible to play a song that is part of the rituals of other people? How to transpose an idea to the stage while maintaining respect for indigenous communities? Are these performances a way of throwing light on these indigenous communities looking for a strategy of decolonization? How is it…

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme include evo-devo research, the evolution of cognitive and behavioural traits, and the evolutionary mechanisms of stress adaptation. This research involves both indoor and outdoor studies.

Birds sing to be heard, but how do they cope with increasing noise levels? Which species persist in cities and why? And do they thrive or suffer in the urban soundscape?

Jinhua Wu defended his thesis on 5 January 2021

Birds around airports are more aggressive and sing as if they have hearing loss. Collaboration between researchers of Manchester Metropolitan University and the Institute of Biology Leiden has led to surprising new findings about the impact of anthropogenic noise on birds around airports. Publication…

IBL-researcher Katharina Riebel, together with international collaborators, published a remarkable finding in Nature Communications on the prevalence of female birdsong.

Can birds - like people- ‘see’ voices and learn how to sing by listening and watching?

The recently published book ‘Avian Cognition’ is the first multi-author book to provide a comprehensive treatment of the cognitive abilities of birds and how they compare to those of other animals. Carel ten Cate, professor of animal behavior at the Institute of Biology, and Susan D. Healy (StAndrews…

Listening to birds and helping science, it is possible. Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) researchers Karan Odom and Katharina Riebel launched a citizen science project to improve the worldwide documentation of female birdsong.

We perform multidisciplinary research at molecular, cellular, and organismal levels of animal biology to increase fundamental understanding of health and disease.

Last week Professor of Animal Behaviour Carel ten Cate was interviewed about intelligent birds, in response to the recent publication of his book 'Avian Cognition' by NPO1.

Population growth, economic expansion and the associated land use caused an increase in the number of bird species facing extinction and a reduction in carbon storage worldwide. These are the findings of an international team of scientists, also from the Leiden University Institute of Environmental…

It may well be that only male zebra finches can sing, but the females are faster at learning to discriminate sounds. Leiden researchers publish their findings in the scientific journal Animal Behaviour.

On average, Dutch breeding birds have become more numerous in the period 1980-2010. The common species have even done better than birds in other European countries. Farmland birds are an exception: they declined sharply both in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe.

Over 80 speakers from around 15 different countries came together to discuss the latest developments in multilingualism during the Conference on Multilingualism 2019 (COM2019). This year’s conference was hosted by Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) at Leiden University.

Comparison between babies and song-birds when they are learning a non-existent language—a study of this kind has never been tried before. But this is what Claartje Levelt, Carel ten Cate (Leiden University) and Jelle Zuidema (University of Amsterdam) are attempting.

Anar Ahmadov is one of eleven Leiden University researchers that have been awarded a Vidi grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The 800.000 euro grant enables Ahmadov to start his own research group on western institutions, finding answers to the question: do they promote or preclude democracy?

A central and much debated topic in the study of language acquisition concerns the nature of the learning mechanisms that are required. Are the computational and learning mechanisms that guide learning about language structure special and specific to language or humans?

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

Anthropogenic noise negatively affects wildlife in a wide range of taxonomic groups.

PhD Defence

The key characteristic of active matter is the motion of an emergent collection (such as a flock of birds), which is driven by the consumption of energy by its active components (i.e. individual birds).

That a parrot can copycat sounds is nothing new. But vocal learning is not common in animals. Researcher Carel ten Cate of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) of Leiden University has now discovered a duck species that can imitate sounds. ‘It started with an obscure reference about an Australian musk…

What kinds of vocal music were not typically transmitted in written musical notation? Can specific ‘lost’ song forms - siciliane, giustiniane, le Grechesche, gli stili “regionali“ nel canto del quattrocento - be more precisely identified than they have been until now, both in musicological research…

The core of this project is the safeguarding and recording of Dogon funeral songs.

This project aims at recording and safeguarding parts of the intangible cultural heritage of the Dogon in central Mali. A major song cycle, the baja ni, forms an integral part of Dogon funeral traditions. The song cycle is attributed to Abirè, a blind Dogon poet/prophet, probably from the 19th c., who…

Shafa’Atussara Silahudin defended her theses on 18 May 2021.

Vocal learning is a trait shared by songbirds and humans. It is also a trait that is restricted by the brain rather than by a species' vocal apparatus. In this dissertation, functional MRI is employed in both species in order to explore potential common neural mechanisms underlying the ability to develop…

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Development & Disease research theme include the mechanisms and evolution of embryonic development, the development of cognitive mechanisms, and animal models for understanding mechanisms of human disease.

How do animals choose their partners? The answer is simple: it’s all about quality. While humans tend to wear clothes that happen to be in fashion, animals do nothing without a reason. Behind beautiful plumage or a deafening roar is only one message: I am in great shape. The evolutionary courtship displays…

Lecture, Sociolinguistics Series

Arts and leisure

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

During the master’s programme in Modern Dutch Literature at Leiden University you will learn to scientifically analyse literary texts, as well as other Dutch cultural texts, such as those found in hiphop songs and diaries.