Dr. stat_orni

Bettina Almasi

My fascination for nature and its processes motivated me to study biology at the University of Freiburg and Zurich. After my master in zoology, I studied the effects of stress on the barn owl and received a PhD degree from the University of Zurich for this work in 2008. I then worked first as a post-doc and since 2015 as a research associate at the Swiss Ornithological Institute.

The barn owl benefits from the open agricultural landscape and from the nesting opportunities in farm buildings. However, the intensification of agriculture in recent years has also affected the barn owl. In my research on the barn owl, I try to understand how environmental conditions, agricultural management, and anthropogenic disturbances affect behavior, breeding success and survival. To do this, I look at the entire annual cycle of the barn owl to find out what the detailed habitat requirements are, how the barn owl gets through the winter, and what effects severe winters and food shortages have on survival and future breeding success.