Tanmay Dixit and Claire Spottiswoode visited collaborators in the USA as part of developing questions for Tanmay’s PhD. Prof L. Mahadevan (Harvard University) and Dr Mary Caswell (Cassie) Stoddard (Princeton University) and their groups made them feel very welcome, and the thought-provoking and fascinating discussions led to the development of very interesting hypotheses and predictions. Here Cassie shows us Einstein’s house in Princeton (no pressure, Tanmay!).
Our paper “Categorical identity signatures can reduce host error rates during brood parasitism” has been published in the journal PLoS Biology.
Dr Chima Nwaogu visited the Animal Ecology Unit at the Evolutionsbiologisk centrum (EBC) at Uppsala University, Sweden, to present the 2025 Christer Hemborg lecture. He gave a research lecture on why Afrotropical birds breed when they do, based on analyses of breeding records derived from Major John Colebrook-Robjent’s egg collection currently held at the Livingstone Museum. He explored how the effects of pre-rain tree green-up and rainfall onset differentially drive invertebrate and grass seed abundance, influencing multiple seasonal bird breeding patterns throughout the year.
Our paper “Pigment concentrations only partially predict avian eggshell colour mimicry in a polymorphic host–brood parasite system” has been published in the journal Biology Letters.
Mairenn Attwood’s paper ‘How do parasites and predators choose their victim? A trade-off between quality and vulnerability across antagonistic interactions’ is out now in the journal Biological Reviews.