In Mozambique, we’ve been studying the other side of honeyguide’s lives: honeyguides are not only brutal brood parasites of other birds, but also the cooperative partners of human honey-hunters. In collaboration the Niassa Carnivore Project, we show that Yao honey-hunters in the Niassa National Reserve use special calls to signal to honeyguides that they’re eager to follow, and that honeyguides use this information to choose partners who are likely to be good collaborators. Read more in articles about the study published in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Geographic, Discovery Channel’s Seeker and Scientific American, listen to radio programmes on the BBC World Service, NPR, Voice of America or The Naked Scientists, watch a YouTube video about the research, or read the original paper by Claire Spottiswoode, Keith Begg and Colleen Begg, published in Science and available in full text from here.
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!