Dr Steve Portugal, The University of Oxford

This Friday and Saturday on BBC2, our research on eggs and Siamese Fighting Fish is featured in David Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities. You can watch it on iPlayer after it’s been broadcast (or watch it live of course).

We’re delighted to welcome Lara Nouri to the lab. Lara will be working with us for six months as a Research Assistant, and will be running experiments with pigeons to examine the effects of logging devices on their behaviour and physiology.

Thrilled to be welcoming Jack Thirkell to our lab group, starting September 2018. Jack will be studying Siamese Fighting Fish and Mole Rats, and co-supervised by Dr Monica Daley (RVC), Dr Chris Faulkes (QMUL) and Prof Craig White (Monash). Jack will join PhD students Dan, Sam, Stephanie, Jenny and Rosa, covering virtually all taxa now (just need someone working on amphibians).

More details to follow.

Our Siamese Fighting Fish have been busy recently. Tomorrow they have 2nd year Animal Behaviour practicals, they’ve been busy on Saturday’s with Applicant Visitor Days, and have the RHUL Science Festival next month. Lots of rest in-between too.

I have a new PhD opportunity available – please see below, and full details on the following links. All about Naked Mole Rats and Siamese Fighting Fish, and how they live in low oxygen environments. Great Co-supervisory team – Dr Chris Faulkes (QMUL), Dr Monica Daley (RVC) and Prof Craig White (Monash).

https://www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=56553

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/biologicalsciences/study-here/research-degrees/phdstudentships2017.aspx

We’re looking forward to welcoming Lara Nouri to begin with us in March. Lara will be working on a project in collaboration with Craig White at Monash, all about the metabolic effects of biologgers on birds.

Lara Nouri

Thrilled to welcome new PhD students Jenny Cantlay (below, left) and Stephanie McClelland (below, right) to the lab, both funded by the London NERC DTP. Jenny is a CASE Studentship with the RSPB, and we will be working with Rory Crawford, Alex Bond and Graham Martin, all about avian vision and sensory ecology. Stephanie will be studying the physiology behind avian brood parasitism, and we will be working with Francisco Ubeda, Claire Spottiswoode and Christina Riehl, and a host of other cuckoo experts. Congratulations also to Rosa Gleave who starts on the laughingthrush project in April, with Sam Turvey and Sarah Papworth as primary supervisors.

Jenny Cantlay

Stephanie McClelland

2017 has been a good year in the lab (generally….). Field work took us to South Africa, Cambodia, Honduras and Borneo, and lab visits to Harvard (USA) and Monash (Australia). Lucy Taylor won a poster prize at the SEB in Sweden (and published her first pigeon PhD paper in JEB), and Dan Sankey won a prize for his talk at the RHUL Postgraduate Symposium (and represented the lab at Biologging in Germany). Rhianna Ricketts and Miranda Reynolds joined the lab, and they both start experiments in earnest in the New Year, with pigeons and cowbirds respectively. 2018 is shaping up to be busy, with a new Research Assistant starting in February to undertake work with the pigeons (in collaboration with Craig White), and our facilities are expanding thanks to a grant from the Royal Society. In the Spring, a new PhD student begins work on the critically endangered blue-crowned laughingthrush (with Sam Turvey and Sarah Papworth), and I start teaching a new module in September called “Extreme Animal Physiology”. I’m particularly looking forward to working with Monica Daley, Chris Faulkes and Nigel Bennett on our exciting mole rat data, and also having an awesome holiday in Croatia in the spring. Happy New Year!

I am looking for a a Field Assistant-Tech person to come and work with us and the pigeons for 6 months next year. Full details below and in the link.

https://jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=1117-457