Luuk Tinbergen

Lukas "Luuk" Tinbergen (7 September 1915 – 1 September 1955) was a Dutch ornithologist and ecologist. His field research examined bird migration, habitat selection, the population ecology of birds of prey and songbirds, and interactions between insectivorous birds and their prey.

In 1949, Gerard Baerends recruited Tinbergen to the University of Groningen to develop field-based animal ecology. A later historical account described him as a behavioural ecologist before the term had been coined. His posthumously published research on insect-eating birds in pine woods included the influential search-image hypothesis, which proposed that repeated encounters with a particular prey type could improve a predator's ability to detect it.

His older brothers were the economist Jan Tinbergen, who received the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969, and the ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Early life and education

Tinbergen was born in The Hague. As a young naturalist, he joined the Nederlandse Jeugdbond voor Natuurstudie, a Dutch youth association for nature study, where he developed as a field ornithologist and began publishing observations in the association's periodical, Amoeba. The book used Tinbergen's own illustrations to depict the characteristic bird communities of different types and ages of woodland.

Tinbergen died by suicide in Groningen on 1 September 1955, six days before his fortieth birthday. In 1994, Tijs Tinbergen made the documentary Gebiologeerd as a tribute to his father and an examination of his father's life and death.

His work at Groningen anticipated the later development of behavioural ecology by analysing animal behaviour in relation to population size, food availability and interactions among species. The search-image hypothesis continued to generate experimental and theoretical research into predator attention, prey selection and the survival advantage of rare prey forms.

Selected publications