The spring leaves are unfurling in Zambia’s miombo woodlands at the end of the dry season, and birds are breeding. Assisted by our usual wonderful field team, Luke McClean is starting his MSc research at the University of Cape Town on honeyguide-host interactions (with a special focus on Lesser Honeyguides and their Black-collared Barbet hosts), Nick Horrocks and Kiyoko Gotanda from the University of Cambridge are working on the trade-off that ground-nesting birds face between having their eggs cooked or eaten, and we welcome a film crew from Germany to film honeyguide-host interactions, ably assisted by Jeroen Koorevaar. See new photos uploaded to the Dry Season Fieldwork Gallery…
New paper on coevolution and chase-away evolution
Our paper “Chase-away evolution maintains imperfect mimicry in a brood parasite–host system despite rapid evolution of mimics” has been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.