Dr Nicholas Horrocks has been awarded a three-year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to continue working on our study systems in Zambia. Nick’s fellowship project is entitled “Phenotypic plasticity in reproductive investment in a rapidly changing world” and will focus on whether ground-nesting birds at our study site (plovers, coursers and nightjars) can adapt to increased nest disturbance and hotter temperatures due to climate change. He will also investigate whether cuckoo finch mothers pre-adapt their chicks to thrive in the specific host nests that different cuckoo finch races parasitise. Congratulations Nick, and thank you to The Leverhulme Trust for their fantastic support once again.
New paper on categorical signatures of identity
Our paper “Categorical identity signatures can reduce host error rates during brood parasitism” has been published in the journal PLoS Biology.