African Cuckoos team runs workshop on “Research Skills in Ecology & Evolution” at Copperbelt University, Zambia

May 10, 2021

Our African Cuckoos research team have just finished running a two-week online workshop on “Research Skills in Ecology & Evolution” for over 30 participants consisting of graduate students and staff at Copperbelt University and Livingstone Museum in Zambia. The course was also attended by participants from the College of African Wildlife Management in Mweka, Tanzania. The first week covered topics such as hypothesis-driven thinking, experimental design, data visualisation and scientific writing for publications and grant proposals. The second week was a “Data Analysis and Visualisation in R” workshop which introduced participants to a range of analytic and graphic techniques available in R for researchers in ecology and evolution. The workshop was run by Dr Gabriel Jamie, Professor Claire Spottiswoode, Dr Chima Nwaogu, Tanmay Dixit, Jess Lund and Mairenn Attwood. There were additional research seminars delivered by Frank Willems and Jeroen Koorevaar. Below is a photo of some of the course participants and facilitators.

News

Chima Nwaogu presents research lecture at Uppsala University, Sweden

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.

read more