Tanmay Dixit, Mairenn Attwood, and Jess Lund presented their work at the virtual Evolution 2021 Conference and the Animal Behavior Society 2021 Conference. Tanmay spoke about Weber’s law and egg signature complexity, Mairenn spoke about whether it benefits a parasite to parasitize aggressive hosts, and Jess spoke about near-perfect mimicry by African cuckoos of fork-tailed drongo eggs.
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.