Congratulations! Margarete Dytkowicz (second from the right) has successfully defended her PhD thesis, which she completed under the supervision of Prof. Dr William Megill (centre) from HSRW and Prof. Dr Tillmann Buttschard (right) from the University of Münster.
Congratulations! Margarete Dytkowicz (second from the right) has successfully defended her PhD thesis, which she completed under the supervision of Prof. Dr William Megill (centre) from HSRW and Prof. Dr Tillmann Buttschard (right) from the University of Münster.
Margarete Dytkowicz’s doctoral thesis is entitled “Evaluation of beaver (Castor fiber) reintroduction projects”, and focuses on the population and feeding ecology of Eurasian beavers that have re-established themselves in their former natural habitat in the District of Cleves. She examined over 8,500 trees throughout the district to map the beavers’ use of habitat, devised a novel camera-trapping technique for photographing the beavers’ tails, proved for the first time that individual beavers can be identified and re-identified by the patterns on their tails, and developed an AI-based computer system to automate their identification. Her work was partly funded by the US/UK NGO Earthwatch.
