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?

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

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo

Cristina Grasseni’s project

Grasseni's contribution to this special feature on food cultures, food systems, and agriculture in Europe builds upon her ongoing project Food citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale.

The HARVEST project explores the dietary choices that our hominin ancestors and relatives made, by recovering information on what they consumed, and how factors like environmental variation, intrinsic biology, and development of food processing technologies could have influenced their decisions.

The ERC project 'Food citizens?' is a comparative analysis of a growing phenomenon in Europe: collective food procurement, namely networks of people who organize direct food production, distribution, and consumption.

This project intends to provide the required knowledgebase for the design of novel mild intervention protocols to prevent fungal food spoilage.

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.

Nearly all the university buildings have cafés and restaurants and in the city there are plenty of places to eat or drink. These include regular or fast-food facilities at local supermarkets, food stalls, snack bars or restaurants of all types and nationalities.

What does it mean to eat healthily and responsibly? This question is gaining a new urgency now that in many countries undernourishment is being overtaken by diseases of affluence, such as obesity, and we are also becoming more aware of the environmental impact of our eating habits. It’s time to take…

The project 'Food citizens?' examines the consequences and premises of collective food procurement in three European cities (Rotterdam, Turin, and Gdańsk).

How do different communities of residents in The Hague perceive and manage food waste in relation to citizenship (rights and responsibilities)?

Arnold van der Valk on Food Council MRA.

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?

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

Cristina Grasseni, Federico de Musso, Ola Gracjasz, Maria Vasile, Vincent Walstra and Marilena Poulopoulou are part of the 'Food citizens?' Research project.

Today, humanity produces sufficient calories, in theory, to feed the 7.7 billion people on the planet: the amount of food produced per person on the planet has gone up more than 40% since the 1960s. Yet, ironically, the prevalence of undernourishment – which had been declining for decades – has started…

Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen, Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen Leiden (CML)

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…

ASLU 7 - A.E. de Hingh

The major objective of the study is to ascertain how Japanese colonialism affected the manner in which food was produced, processed, prepared and consumed in the colony, and how new attitudes towards these practices were constructed.

Jinhua Wu defended his thesis on 5 January 2021

How do the starchy botanical foodways reflect upon previous archaeological understandings in the northern and circum-Caribbean?

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.

This is the first special issue of any organisation studies journal on food labour. Why is this a big deal? In this Introduction, we argue that the field should pay much more attention to the agri-food system and the work that goes into producing, distributing and consuming foodstuff. Food is such an…

A study by a Leiden-Wageningen group shows that present-day humans are biologically poorly equipped to deal with the toxins they are regularly exposed to in smoky environments: compared to earlier hominins, we modern humans are probably even worse off. The study appeared in Molecular Biology and Evolution.…

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…

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

The global agri-food system plays a critical role in food security and environmental issues.

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…

What did our distant ancestors eat and how did they prepare their food? For the length of a month, experimental archaeologist Diederik Pomstra subjects himself to a rigorous palaeodiet. He is vlogging about his experiences to reach a non-academic audience.

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.

As we are working very hard to make our University more green, it is of upmost importance that you join us in our battle and start increasing the local biodiversity from your own house! Every bit will help, it is beneficial for you own mental health and most importantly it is fun! We have created this…

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.

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…

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.

On the first weekend of June a plot of land in Lutkemeerpolder, West Amsterdam, was occupied in order to host the Food Autonomy Festival. The event was organized in solidarity with local farms to protest against the development of Schiphol airport-oriented business park. Two of our PhD's, Maria Vasile…

On Friday 4th February 2022 we welcomed in hybrid format (in person and online live streaming) 154 registered participants, of which 97 online, to present the first results of the Food Citizens? ERC Consolidator project.

Microwear and starch grain analysis on experimental and archaeological grinding tools from Central

“Neighborhood solidarity cannot compensate the absence of the State: a response from the local administration is needed”

Fungal food spoilage often starts with a contamination with spores. Experimental data strongly indicate the existence of subpopulations of spores with different levels of resistance to preservation methods.

Nanomaterials can pass much further along the food chain than was previously thought. The particles can change shape and size in each organism, enabling them to pass on to the next one in the chain. Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences discovered this accidentally when using a novel…

Advisory Board member Colin Sage shares insights about the Food Citizens? project.

The Food Citizens? team has contributed in the special issue of the ICA journal. The semi-scientific journal of the study association Itiwana of Leiden University's Institute of Cultural Anthropology.