Why do migratory birds sing on their non-breeding grounds in Africa during the northern winter? It’s long been assumed that they are defending individual non-breeding territories, but by means of field experiments and radio-tracking of Willow Warblers in the field in Zambia, PhD student Marjorie Sorensen shows that the winter lives of Palaearctic-African migrants can be much more social and intriguing: read the full paper in Behavioral Ecology.
Evolutionary Biology Crash Course
Tanmay Dixit was a member of a team organising and lecturing in the inaugural Evolutionary Biology Crash Course. This course, aimed at undergraduate or early-postgraduate students, teaches evolutionary principles to students who have had limited opportunities to be exposed to evolutionary ideas. The course is funded by the Equal Opportunities Initiative Fund of the European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). Tanmay presented lectures on behavioural ecology and evolution, focussing on kin selection, coevolution, and parasitism. Over 700 students, with the vast majority from the global South, attended the course, which was a resounding success!