Dr Steve Portugal, Animal Behaviour and Physiology

Thrilled to be awarded a Leverhulme Grant to study eggshell physiology, biomechanics and possible biomimetic applications. There will be a postdoc position starting summer 2019. Full advert and details to follow. Get in touch if interested.

Our new paper is out today in Biology Letters! All about the costs of moulting flight feathers in wild geese; it’s high! You can read the paper here!

Interested in bird eggs? Come and do a PhD with Douglas Russell (Natural History Museum) and I – details here!

Interested in flight/flocking/social learning/cognition? -Come do a PhD with Dr Elli Leadbeater and I. Homing Pigeons and Southern Bald Ibis as model species. Details in the link here – PhD.

PhD Jenny Cantlay is busy at the dive tank facility in Patuxent, working with some fantastic diving duck species (photos by Jenny).

We’ve had a paper accepted in Biology Letters, all about the energetics of moulting in barnacle geese (goose photo; Trevor Gunby). 

Our paper, “The origin and maintenance of metabolic allometry: genetic constraint, random evolution, and multivariate selection” has been accepted in Nature Ecology and Evolution. This work was very much conceived and led by Prof Craig White at Monash University, and a big thank you Craig for inviting me to be part of the work.