Elisa Perinot

I am an evolutionary biologist, interested in animal behaviour. Currently, I am a Ph.D student at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna and part of the conservation project lead by Waldrappteam. I am studying cooperative behaviour in Northern bald ibis (Geronticus eremita) and V-formation during migration flights. In particular, I focus on the effect that sociality among the individuals can have on the temporal pattern of switches inside the flight formation. I am doing this using high-precision GNSS loggers during flights combined with behavioural observation on the floor.

I received a Bachelor of Science Biology and a Master of Science in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Padua, Italy. I studied cooperative behaviour in Chimpanzees and the courtship behaviour in the Golden-collared manakin. I started collaborating in this last project for my master thesis and I have been working on it for over two years now (as a side project, since I have my Ph.D). It gave me a lot of experience in collecting data in the field (Panamanian rainforest), in analysing and problem solving processes and in writing. Above all, it made me understand my passion for behavioural biology and and it nurtured my enthusiasm for studying animal behaviour under natural condition in the field.

I am at the beginning of my research career and so far I have co-presented a poster at a conference and I will present my own project in a couple of months. At the moment I am writing my first paper as a co-author.

February 2019