Miriam Scriba
PhD candidate | Behavioural Ecology | Vision | Datascience
PhD candidate | Behavioural Ecology | Vision | Datascience
I am a behavioral biologist and PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg, currently in the final phase of my doctoral research.
My doctoral studies focus on the mating system of jumping spiders and how visual and vibrational cues
influence male courtship and predator avoidance.
When to engage in risky behaviours is an important decision in an individual’s life, and an important research topic in behavioural ecology.
Jumping spiders are known for their elaborate courtship displays. Misdirected courtship of males towards predators and females of different species is often observed,
but its consequences are not really known. I am interested in risk-aversion and misdirected courtship in Saitis barbipes.
My current research project investigates differences between males, females and juveniles when confronted with another,
larger jumping spider, with the aim of understanding how sex differences in risk aversion explain misdirected courtship.
Like many other jumping spider species, males of Saitis barbipes perform a complex multimodal courtship display involving dancing, colour display,
and vibration.
I am interested in the dancing part of their signal and its function during courtship. One of my projects focuses on whether females
pay attention to male displays and if the male's dancing movements serve as an indicator of his quality.
A male Saitis barbipes (right) courting a female.
The first image shows the left anterior median eye and anterior lateral eye of a jumping spider. The second image shows the retina of the anterior lateral eye of a male through my costum-built ophthalmoscope.
I enjoy the challenge of learning programming languages. After learning R for statistical analysis, I developed an interest in Python for Raspberry Pi applications and enjoyed developing creative solutions for my experimental setups. More recently, I have explored HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and completed a course in MySQL for database management. I am excited to further expand my skill set by learning to work with PHP and continuing to apply my knowledge to small real-world application projects.
Feel free to reach out to me at miriam.scriba@uni-hamburg.de.
I look forward to hearing from you!