Avian physiology and neuroscience are important parts of both basic and applied science. Applied avian physiology is represented mainly by poultry science, serving for further development of poultry industry. Recently the focus in agriculture is moving from the highly efficient and profitable production to the production of ‘healthy’ products. Therefore poultry welfare, a particular issue within the poultry science, is getting an increasing attention from public as well as EU policymakers.
The concept of the Department of Endocrinology and Ethology is to use a combined physiological, neurobiological, and ethological approach focused on the study of hormones, neurotransmitters and their receptors in birds during various behaviours. International acknowledgement of our results in the field of poultry behaviour and welfare is illustrated by numerous collaborations with prestigious laboratories including the Scottish Agricultural College, UK, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden, or University of Maryland, USA, which resulted in the joint research projects and publications.
New topics at the department are the birdsong learning and avian neurogenesis. In this field we focus our studies on function of vocal nuclei for the learned vocal communication.
