Annual meeting of the Ethological Society - Tutzing 2025

February 19^th – 21^st, 2025

Join us for ETHO 2025 in Tutzing, the Annual Meeting of the Ethological Society, organized by the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Seewiesen.

We invite all behavioural biologists, including members and non-members of the Ethological Society, to present their work and discuss it with colleagues in person. Everyone is welcome and appreciated, whether you are a student, an early career researcher or a more senior person.

Special symposium

In addition to talks and posters on all aspects of behaviour, we are delighted to announce an extravaganza: the 2025 meeting will feature a special Symposium on Evolutionary Behavioural Genetics, organised by Richard Merrill (LMU Munich) and Clemens Küpper (MPI for Biological Intelligence):

“A mechanistic understanding about the diversity and evolution of  behavioural phenotypes requires knowledge about the underlying genetic variation. Recent years have seen tremendous progress in linking distinct behavioural strategies with variation at the level of DNA sequence, gene regulation and expression. The aim of this symposium is to provide an update on current advances to characterize the molecular links between genotypes and behavioural phenotypes in a broad range of animal taxa.”

About the ETHO 2025 venue

The conference venue is the Evangelische Akademie in Tutzing, a beautiful castle located directly at Lake Starnberg, which also offers accommodation. If you wish to stay at the castle, please indicate this on your registration form. We have reserved a number of rooms at a reasonable price. First come, first served!
Please note that accommodation is not included in the conference fee. 
Rooms will be paid directly to the Academy by each attendee on site.

The Evangelische Akademie is centrally located in Tutzing, where you will find several hotels, restaurants, bakeries, and snack bars within walking distance. The train station is within walking distance from the venue (<10min) but can also be reached by public transport (Bus 977). Trains connect Tutzing with the Central Train Station of Munich every 20 min (for more travel details, please see here).

Plenary Speakers

Hanna Kokko

Do we really need to introduce Hanna Kokko? For the few of you who should have managed to do science without stumbling across her studies: Hanna Kokko holds an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. It is almost impossible to comprehensively describe her research interests, as she has been modelling (and excelling at) basically everything ranging from aging, demography, life history evolution, migration, parental care, sex, social evolution to… you just name it.

Bettina Wachter

Bettina Wachter is heading a research group at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin. Being a vegetarian, she has been studying carnivores throughout her career (well, she had started with primates, though). After having co-led the spotted hyaena project in the Ngorongoro Crater for decades, she shifted her focus to study human-wildlife conflicts in Namibia. Her research on the life history of cheetahs (and Namibian farmers) are – in our view – the gold standard for how state-of-the-art behavioural ecology can help conservation.

Jens Krause

Jens Krause is truly a pioneer in the study of collective behaviour. Heading a research group at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (as well as holding two professorships, one at the Technical University Berlin and one at the Humboldt University Berlin), his research addresses group-living in fish and other animals with an emphasis on decision making and social networks. But that’s not all, Jens Krause is also spearheading the use of robotics, AI and machine learning in the study of animal behaviour.

For travel grants:

Travel grants are available from the Ethological Society; please check the website here for more information.

Sponsors:

Ethologische Gesellschaft e.V.
(Ethological Society)

e-obs GmbH

ethology
International Journal of Behavioural Biology