Members of the research team from the University of Cambridge and the University of Cape Town meet up in Cape Town for an intense few days of planning our next research steps, accompanied by plenty of winter birdwatching and botanising. Here Jess, Tanmay, Luke, Claire and Mairenn attempt (with the help of a whale skull) not to be blown off the coast of the Cape of Good Hope.
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.
Our paper “Repeatable randomness, invariant properties, and the design of biological signatures of identity” has been published in the journal Evolution.
Tanmay’s PhD, entitled “Signatures and forgeries: optimality in a coevolutionary arms race” was awarded with no corrections. Huge thanks to collaborators and colleagues who were instrumental to this work, and to examiners James Herbert-Read and Graeme Ruxton. Tanmay will remain on the team and continue conducting fieldwork in Choma as part of the Junior Research fellowship that he is starting at Jesus College, Cambridge.
Our paper “When perfection isn’t enough: host egg signatures are an effective defence against high-fidelity African cuckoo mimicry” has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.