Dr Steve Portugal, Animal Behaviour and Physiology

Great news today that our paper has been accepted in Biology Letters. This paper looks at (1) whether body mass determines dominance hierarchies in pigeons (it does), (2) how stable these hierarchies are over successive years (very stable), and (3) whether artificially mass loading the low body mass subordinates would make them rise up the rankings (it does).

This paper is based on my postdoc work at the RVC. Only taken me five years to finally get it published. More to follow when it comes out.

Was fun chatting to the Times of India about birds and flight, you can read it here!

Our new paper is out in Global Ecology and Conservation, looking at how effective underwater light deterrents in gillnets are with Long-tailed Ducks. Congratulations Jenny on your 2nd PhD paper. You can read it here!

Congrats Sam on your first PhD paper coming out. Based at the fieldsite in Honduras, all about territoriality and aggressive interactions in laughing-thrushes.

Congratulations to PhD student Jenny Cantlay, Our paper has been accepted in Global Ecology and Conservation. This paper, also part of Jenny’s thesis, investigated visual fields in Long-tailed Ducks, and then experimentally tested the effectiveness of LED deterrents in gillnets.

More to follow.

Glad people liked our slightly random paper on the impacts of moon phase on wild Barnacle Geese physiology.

Some nice positive news. A pigeon who collided with a window just before Christmas has now healed and made a full recovery, and took her first flight of 2020 yesterday.

Research has of course stopped due to the virus outbreak, but the pigeons still need feeding and watering. Thankfully this is walking distance from home, and doesn’t involve going inside buildings etc. It’s great to spend some peaceful time with the birds.

You can read it here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30013-0 

It’s been a busy few weeks, with various lab members spread around the world undertaking fieldwork. Marie has been in California working at the Western Foundation for Vertebrate Zoology, collecting new and exciting eggshell samples. Steph has been in Zambia working out at Claire Spottiswoode’s fieldsite, getting more metabolic data from whydah eggs. Jack and Eleanor has been based in Pretoria at Nigel Bennett’s lab, studying mole rat physiology and biomechanics.

As always we’re massively grateful to all our collaborators. And congratulations to former lab member Dan Sankey, who has just started a postdoc at the University of Exeter.

(photos taken by various members of the lab group)