Sebastian Vetter

I am on the verge of finishing my studies of biology in Freiburg, Germany. However, before doing my diploma thesis I wanted to gain some practical experience in both the work with wolves and behavioural studies in general. Therefore I did a scientific internship at the Wolf Science Center from October 2009 to March 2010.
During my studies I specialized in ecology and evolutionary biology, wildlife ecology and management, phytogeography, animal physiology, ethology and anthropology.
My chief interests lie in the (behavioural-) ecology as well as in the wildlife management.
Wolves have been fascinating me all my life. At the beginning my interests lay rather in the myths and legends about these impressive animals, but became more and more scientific in the course of time and particularly in the course of my studies, so that I finally came to the Wolf Science Center.

Research

WSC Project:

Observational spatial memory in the grey wolf (Canis lupus)
In social or communally foraging species where there is much competition about limited food resources caching of food is thought to be adaptive under certain circumstances. Further it has been shown that in these species pilfering of food caches could be adaptive as well, sometimes leading to real arms races between cachers and pilferers and therefore to the development of efficient pilfering behaviour. Using observational spatial memory (OSM) actually is the most efficient and secure way to steel cached food from other individuals.
There are many studies investigating the OSM of different bird species – mostly corvids – but just few looking at this ability in mammals, which in general are thought to rely much more on olfactory cues during foraging. The grey wolf is such a social mammal in which there is quite a lot of competition about food therefore presenting a nice model for investigating this ability in mammals.
I study the observational spatial memory of the wolves at the WSC by making artificial food caches and analysing the cache retrieval behaviour when the wolves were able to watch the hiding compared with the one when they were not able to watch it. Due to the difference in the age of the wolves I just tested these three born in 2008 yet. After finishing my diploma thesis in Freiburg I will come back in spring 2011 in order to finish my study by repeating my experiments with the six wolves born in 2009.
 

Diploma thesis at the Albert-Ludwig University of Freibrug, Germany:

Cuticular hydrocarbons as a sexual signal in Pteromalidae (Hymenoptera)