Print this pageOliver Honer & Bettina Wachter
Oliver Höner and Bettina Wachter are evolutionary ecologists at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin, Germany. They have been studying the spotted hyenas in the Ngorongoro Crater in northern Tanzania since 1996. They individually recognise all spotted hyenas of the eight social groups inhabiting the Crater floor and closely monitor the demography and life histories of their study animals. With these detailed long-term data from several hundred individuals they answer questions fundamental to our understanding of the behavioural ecology of spotted hyenas and their role in the ecosystem, and thereby help providing the basis for the conservation of this species. They are particularly interested in mate choice behaviour and its fitness consequences, dispersal behaviour and population dynamics, and the effect of group-living on behaviour and fitness of individuals. In collaboration with the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority Dr Höner and Dr Wachter also investigate factors that influence hyena population dynamics and relationships between hyenas and their prey, and look at competition between spotted hyenas and other carnivores. Another important topic of their research is the investigation of the impact of pathogens and disease outbreaks on individual hyenas and the population as a whole in collaboration with colleagues from other research disciplines at the IZW and other international research institutes.
The research topics and aims of Dr Höner and Dr Wachter, additional information about spotted hyenas and a list of publications can be found under http://www.izw-berlin.de/
