The Dry Season team is back into the swing of things! Dr Chima Nwaogu began data collection for his fellowship project on breeding phenology, focusing on tchagras and dark-capped bulbuls in addition to historical egg collection records from the Choma area. Collins Moya and Silky Hamama are taking the lead to continue data collection on this project over the coming months. Jess Lund has been studying greater and lesser honeyguides, as well as their hosts. Meanwhile, Mairenn Attwood has been conducting playback experiments on fork-tailed drongos. After missing the 2021 season due to the pandemic, it was great to return to the site, see everyone again, and get back to field work!
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.