Dr Gabriel Jamie is continuing his fieldwork on the evolution of polymorphisms in cisticolas and prinias in Nigeria, where he is also a teaching fellow at the AP Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI). The image shows the 2022 APLORI MSc class during the Global Birding Big Day on 14 May. The team recorded 135 species while walking around the nature reserve surrounding the institute.
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.
Our paper “Pigment concentrations only partially predict avian eggshell colour mimicry in a polymorphic host–brood parasite system” has been published in the journal Biology Letters.
Mairenn Attwood’s paper ‘How do parasites and predators choose their victim? A trade-off between quality and vulnerability across antagonistic interactions’ is out now in the journal Biological Reviews.
Our paper “How animals discriminate between stimulus magnitudes: a meta-analysis” has been published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.