Bettina wachter
“I am fascinated by wildlife species with peculiar characteristics because they provide great opportunities to investigate particular aspects of their evolutionary biology. Cheetahs trigger my curiosity because they have a low genetic variability but nevertheless reproduce well and are healthy in the wild. And they are highly threatened. This provides an exciting challenge to link basic research with applied conservation activities.”
Dr Bettina Wachter is the head of the Cheetah Research Project since its start in 2002 and a senior scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW). She is an evolutionary biologist and behavioural ecologist with a strong interest in reproduction, mate choice, genetics, health, immune system and its applications for conservation.
Sub-projects in the Cheetah Research Project
Stakeholder involvement and solution to the farmer-cheetah conflict
Reproduction and endocrinology in free-ranging and captive cheetahs
Professional experience
Since 1996 research on African carnivore species in Southern and East Africa, with extended periods of field work on free-ranging carnivore species on farmland in Namibia and in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Profound knowledge and experience in animal observation, handling and dissection, methods of counting and radio-tracking animals, collection of samples for genetic, hormonal, immunological, histological and serological analyses using non or minimal invasive techniques. Establishment of field laboratories to process samples and of transport chains of frozen samples to Europe. Maintaining long-term co-operations with farmers, stakeholders and government officials in Africa and Europe.
Education
1996 – 2001: Dr. rer. nat at the University of Berne, Switzerland and the Max-Planck Institute for Behavioural Physiology, Seewiesen, Germany. Doctoral thesis: Facultative siblicide, female choice and male reproductive success in the female-dominated spotted hyaena Crocuta crocuta in the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania.
1988 – 1994: Studies in biology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. MSc thesis: Diet overlap and polyspecific associations of red colobus and Diana monkeys in the Taï National Park, Ivory Coast.