Huge congratulations to former PhD student Dan Sankey, whose paper “Absence of “selfish-herd” dynamics in bird flocks under threat” has been accepted in Current Biology. This was very much Dan’s brainchild, and we collaborated with Prof. Charlotte Hemelrijk and team. Our paper uses a robotic peregrine falcon to investigate how bird flocks respond to threat. More details to follow.
Big Congratulations to Steph and Cecylia for winning the top prizes at this years RHUL Biology Symposium. Nice one to Jack, Hana and Rosa who also gave great talks. Last week, Master’s students Amaia, Sam and Ceri delivered fantastic presentations as part of our weekly EEB series.
Congratulations PhD student Baptiste Garde (Swansea University, primary supervisor Emily Shepard) on getting your paper accepted in Royal Society Open Science, and thanks for including me in the work. All about protean movements in pigeons. More details to follow.
Congratulations and thank you to Prof. Craig White (Monash) for getting his paper accepted today in Functional Ecology, and for involving me in the work. It’s a very important piece of work, showing that geographic bias in existing data sets limits our capacity to predict organismal responses in the vast areas of the planet that are unstudied, and that this geographic bias is a much greater source of uncertainty than the difference between the current climate and the projected future climate.
As part of MSc student Sam’s project, he’s been busy putting out camera traps to see who is eating his fake caterpillars. As an aside, Sam has captured some fascinating badger footage, including this individual not enjoying having a muntjac deer close to the sett!
Had an enjoyable hour chatting about birds. You can listen to the podcast via the link below:
https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/research/research-excellence/seminar-sessions/
I’ve been enjoying giving evening outreach talks to various groups and societies, focusing on previous V-formation findings and ongoing pigeon research. I was amazed by the reach of the London Natural History Society, and it was amazing to be presenting to people all over the world. Benefit of online presentations!!! You can watch one of the presentations via the link below (this was to the London Bird Club).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7rj8JvxLrk&feature=youtu.be
Congrats to Eleanor, whose MSc thesis has come back with Minor Revisions. A difficult year for all those doing an MSc. We’re looking forward to finishing the manuscript; all about comparative locomotion in the Bathyergidae group.
Very happy to welcome four new postgrads to the lab, Ursh, Sam, Amaia and Ceri. They’ll be researching mole rat physiology, aposematism and birds, metabolism and dominance in pigeons, and communication in giraffes. Exciting!
It’s been a bumper year for pigeon babies. So far we’ve had 20 babies. Amazing how fast they grow.
