Current state-of-the-art orientation behaviour studies in captive migratory birds are limited to 1-hour assays. In our OriLAB facility, we can measure the bird’s position for several days at high frequency with a throughput of half a million data points per day! The goal of the project is to develop software pipelines to manipulate, organize, analyse, and visualize such a large dataset to provide a temporally resolved orientation behaviour of different species of songbirds.
This project is part of a large research program in the Animal Navigation Lab that aims to understand how animals migrate. We use migratory birds as model species and try to disentangle the mechanisms that cause variations in migratory phenotypes. We employ field and laboratory approaches to study the endogenous migratory program and to understand how different phenotypes respond to environmental cues.
We are looking for students with coding experience in Python and an interest in handling large datasets, particularly tracking/motion data.
Duration: 15 cr (10 weeks) or 30 cr (20 weeks).
Contact information
Giuseppe Bianco, giuseppe.bianco@biol.lu.se
Susanne Åkesson, susanne.akesson@biol.lu.se