Invited speakers

Zoologist specialising in vertebrate biology, behaviour and cognitive biology, bioacoustics and sound communication, zoo biology and species conservation. She studied Biology and completed her doctorate in 2006. Since 2009, Angela Stöger has worked as a scientist at the Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, where she founded the Mammal Communication Lab in 2011. Since 2023, the the research group is affiliated to the Acoustic research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Angela Stöger researches the communication of mammals; currently, she is focussing on African and Asian elephants. Moreover, her research team also studies the communication of cheetahs, lions, giraffes, bears and African wild dogs. In 2021, Angela Stöger was among the top 3 in the election of Austria’s Scientist of the Year. She is the author of the book “Von singenden Mäusen und quietschenden Elefanten” (Of singing mice and squeaking elephants) and “Elefanten: Ihre Weisheit, ihre Sprache und ihr soziales Miteinander” (Elephants: their wisdom, their communication and sociality) which were both awarded Austria’s Science Book of the Year in 2022 and 2024, respectively. Since October 1, 2025, she is leading the Endowed Professorship for Zoo Conservation Science at the Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, funded by the Vienna Zoo. 

Leonardo Ancillotto is a vertebrate ecologist and bioacoustician specializing in the study of bat behaviour and social communication. His research employs bioacoustics as a primary tool to investigate social organization, foraging strategies, and the spatio-temporal dynamics of bats in both natural and human-modified environments. His scientific activity focuses on the development and application of advanced bioacoustic approaches to characterize complex vocal repertoires, assess behavioural plasticity, and quantify bat responses to environmental pressures such as urbanization and noise pollution. He has participated in several national and international research projects, publishing 147 peer-reviewed papers and contributing to university teaching and science communication activities. He is currently a researcher at the Institute of Research on Terrestrial Ecosystems of the Italian National Research Council.

Paolo Domenici is Research Director at the Italian National Research Council (CNR-Institute of Biophysics) in Pisa. He received his PhD in 1993 from the University of British Columbia (Zoology) and conducted postdoctoral research at the Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory, Oban, UK and CNRS Marseille, France. His main expertise is on aquatic animal locomotion and predator-prey interactions. He has been involved in a number of international projects on predation by large aquatic vertebrates and the effect of climate change on fish behaviour and ecophysiology. His research interests include behavioural mechanisms of fish schooling, swimming kinematics and escape decisions in a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate taxa, and foraging strategies in billfishes and cetaceans.