Animals that rely on camouflage can choose the best places to conceal themselves based on their individual appearance, our work in Zambia has found. Studying nine species of nightjar, plover and courser, we found that individual birds adjust their choices of where to nest based on their specific patterns and colours of their eggs (in the case of plovers and coursers that flee at long range) or their plumage (in the case of nightjars that sit tight on their eggs). Read more in the full paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, by Martin Stevens, Jolyon Troscianko, Jared Wilson-Aggarwal and Claire Spottiswoode; see also news articles about this research in The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The International Business Times and Cosmos Magazine, and Jared’s behind-the-paper blog on the journal website.
Outreach for British Science Week at local Cambridgeshire school
During this year’s British Science Week, we’ve been engaging with local school children in Cambridgeshire. Mairenn Attwood led interactive talks at the Thomas Clarkson Academy in Wisbech, a school partnered with ‘Teach First’ (a charity aimed at reducing educational inequality).