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 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.