Niki Teunissen

Biography

Niki is a behavioural ecologist, who often combines intense field work with detailed observations on marked animals. She received her BSc and MSc degree from the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. For my MSc, she 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. She has continued working with the purple-crowned fairy-wrens ever since. For my PhD at Monash University, her 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. She has continued as a postdoctoral research fellow at Monash University, conducting research with a conservation focus, investigating environmental impacts on breeding success and survival. Her research at Wageningen University (the Netherlands), focuses on understanding why many animals stay at home to live in social groups instead of dispersing to breed independently elsewhere.