Dr Steve Portugal, Animal Behaviour and Physiology

We had a fun lab away day, involving Moroccan food for lunch, and then an Escape Room we barely escaped from. Congrats also to Jasper, Rana and Ursh on submitting their MSc theses!

Very happy to have our paper accepted in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and congratulations Andrew and Marina, who did much of the heavy lifting for the work. This is a reworked version of a group EPSRC grant, and it’s great to have it find the ideal home. It’s all about biologically inspired herding of animal groups by robots. More to follow.

Congratulations PJ Jacobs and Pretoria mole-rat team for their new paper in Antioxidants, and thanks for including us in the work. All about tissue oxidative ecology along an aridity gradient in a mammalian subterranean species!

A very enjoyable visit to The Hawk Conservancy. Mainly to collect the visual field equipment. But stayed for the birds.

Always a pleasure to write about Secretary Birds, so was very happy to be asked to write a Quick Guide on them for Current Biology. It’s a Special Issue focusing on birds, and each contributor got to write a short piece about their favourite bird. I wrote about the first time I saw a wild Rhinoceros Hornbill. You can read the two articles HERE and HERE, respectively.

Third and finally, we welcome Jorge Emms-Medina, who will be working on how pigeons recognise each other.

After numerous cancellations due to COVID, it’s been great to be in Borneo, running our Borneo Fieldcourse for the Undergraduate students.

Very happy our paper has been accepted in Ibis. All about drivers of eggshell thickness indices in bird eggshells. Congrats first author Marie Attard.

We’re looking forward to welcoming three new MSc students to the lab next month. First up, we have Ellie Lucas. Ellie is going to be studying the visual fields of tropical seabirds!