Niki Teunissen

I am a behavioural ecologist, often combining intense field work with detailed observations on marked animals. I got my BSc and MSc degree from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. For my MSc, I travelled to the Seychelles to study interspecific competition between birds, and to the Kimberley (Western Australia) to study benefits of group living in endangered purple-crowned fairy-wrens. I have continued working with the purple-crowned fairy-wrens ever since. For my PhD at Monash University, my research focused on the benefits of cooperation and living in social groups and explains why subordinate fairy-wrens help raise others’ offspring and defend against predators. I continued as postdoctoral research fellow at Monash University, conducting research with a conservation focus, investigating environmental impacts on breeding success and survival. Subsequently, I received a postdoc fellowship at Wageningen University (the Netherlands), for which I focused on understanding why many animals stay at home to live in social groups instead of dispersing to breed independently elsewhere. Currently, I am a postdoctoral research fellow at Monash University studying the impact of environmental change on the ecology of purple-crowned fairy-wrens.