Study Sites

I am have been lucky to (continue to) undertake research at several amazing study sites.  My research began at Mulligan's Flat Nature Reserve, near Canberra, Australia, with my collaborator Peter Milburn.  Our original aims were to establish a long-term monitoring site for evaluating the impacts of an anthropogenic habitat amelioration experiment undertaken by the Australian National University (see here for further details).  This involved designing a study with paired plots covering addition of fallen timber and kangaroo grazing exclosures.  However, during the first two years of the study we repeatedly captured birds in mixed-species flocks having maintained social group membership across both years.  These observations led me to asking questions about mixed-species flocking (the eventual topic of my PhD) and in the (austral) autumn of 2011 I spent three months colour-marking and observing flocks of thornbills (Acanthiza spp.) to quantitatively describe their flocking associations and describe the importance of mutualistic interactions between buff-rumped (A. reguloides) and both yellow-rumped (A. chrysorrhoa) and striated thornbills (A. lineata).  This study is now being brought back to life to investigate changes over the past 15 years in this system.

After my move to Oxford, I became heavily involved with the long-term study in Wytham Woods. To most ecologists or evolutionary biologists, Wytham Woods is synonymous with the pioneering work of David Lack and Chris Perrins on great tits (Parus major) which has gone on to countless studies on this model system exploring diverse topics (see here for further details).  However, my study is taking a step outside of the realm of the research undertaken in the past decade and revisiting some of the questions first posed by David Lack in his ground-breaking book on ecological isolation in birds.  Thus, in addition to participating in 'the breeding season', which involves monitoring the nests of blue (Cyanistes caeruleus) and great tits, I undertake my research during the winter when the mixed-species bird flocks are most prominent.  This work is part of the social network study under the ERC grant awarded to Prof. Ben Sheldon.  Our research team has set-up a grid of 65 automated monitoring stations that detect the presence of PIT-tagged birds (c. 2850 individuals in 2011/12) across the winter.  My contribution has been to add three species to the study: nuthatch (Sitta europaea), marsh tit (Peocile palustris) and coal tit (Periparus ater); and I use both the detection grid as well as experimental plots in order to measure and quantify the collective behaviour of these mixed-species flocks.

My post-doctoral work on olive baboons first took me to the Mpala research centre in Kenya. This research station is co-run by Princeton University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and located in a very interesting area of the world—right on the equator, at over 1800m altitude, and overlooking the stunning peak of Mt Kenya. This is now my primary study where I have based my research project on vulturine guineafowl, a project that I established in 2016 and that has led me (and my team) to explore many corners of this fascinating landscape.

When I moved to the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (now Animal Behavior), I also established two new studies. I took over the local tit nestbox population, and established a new system on zebra finches. Over 6 years, we monitored the nestboxes each year and studied details about the pair-bond formation in zebra finches, the structure of their society, and how stress transmits through social groups.

Since 2018, I have also been collaborating with researchers from Brazil to study a rare human-dolphin interaction. Dolphin appear to cooperate with fishermen to catch fish. Why? That's what we're seeking to find out by continuing the long-term study of dolphins and fishers from Laguna in Brazil and expanding the work through a new collaboration with researchers in Kerala India (where similar interactions have also been described).

In 2022, I began working at the Australian National University, where we have access to a wonderful array of local species. We are working across the urban and peri-urban areas of Canberra where we continue the long-term study of superb fairywrens that was established in the late 1980s at the Australian National Botanical Gardens

and the long-term study of white-winged choughs (which breed in both the suburbs and nearby bushland reserves) that was established in the mid 1980s

We have also been expanding beyond Canberra in our pursuit of gaining an understanding of how Australian honeyeaters use the landscape and where they migrate. This work takes us to some beautiful Australian landscapes.

Finally, we are lucky that ANU has built us some amazing new aviary facilities, where we hope to continue our work peering into the mechanisms that underpin animal behaviour, including movement and social decision-making.