I received my PhD-degree at Leiden University in 1998, after which I went to San Francisco, California, USA for a four-year post-doc with fieldwork in Cameroon and Colorado. Subsequently, I returned to Leiden for another post-doc and to become assistant professor in 2004 and associate professor in 2012.

More information about Hans Slabbekoorn

I received my PhD-degree at Leiden University in 1998, after which I went to San Francisco, California, USA for a four-year post-doc with fieldwork in Cameroon and Colorado. Subsequently, I returned to Leiden for another post-doc and to become assistant professor in 2004 and associate professor in 2012.

I am fascinated by the evolution of acoustic signals and explaining causes and consequences of evolutionary change. My core model system over the years has been birds singing to defend a territory or to attract a mate, with a special interest for perceptual processes in the natural environment.

In the last fifteen years, I started to work more and more on noise-impact studies related to human activities, together with a growing number of highly motivated students at Leiden University. We published on an association between song frequency and traffic noise levels in urban birds in Nature in 2003, which jump-started follow-up studies all over the world.

In the last eight years, I extended the field of explorations to the underwater world. We first focused on the role of sound in courtship in several fish species, but soon recognized the importance of studying noise-impact on aquatic life underwater.

Activities