The African Bird Fair was virtual this year but still showcased some fascinating talks on African Ornithology! Jess Lund presented her MSc work on near-perfect mimicry by African cuckoos, and Cameron Blair presented his BSc(Hons) work on the development of greater honeyguide guiding calls. Recordings of both talks are available here in a fascinating session of research talks from postgraduate students at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town.
New paper on imperfect egg mimicry
Our paper “Combined measures of mimetic fidelity explain imperfect mimicry in a brood parasite-host system” has just been published in the journal Biology Letters. This study was led by Tanmay Dixit, and carried out together with Gary Choi, Salem al-Mosleh, Jess Lund, Jolyon Troscianko, Collins Moya, L Mahadevan, and Claire Spottiswoode, as part of a collaboration between our group and Prof. Mahadevan and his lab at Harvard University. Together we combined mathematical tools and field experiments in Zambia to quantify a key difference – “squiggle” markings – between the eggs of hosts (tawny-flanked prinias) and parasites (cuckoo finches). We showed that suboptimal behaviour on the part of prinias allows cuckoo finches to get by with an imperfect copy of prinia eggs.