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July 2025
July 2025
The bird group presented its latest advances at SEB annual conference in Antwerp .
Congrats on the great talks and posters!
December 2024
December 2024
New publication!
Congratulations to Morgane Fournier for this new paper investigating the deformation of the vocal system during head/neck motions!
Fournier, M., Olson, R., Van Wassenbergh, S. and Provini, P. (2024). The avian vocal system: 3D reconstruction reveals upper vocal tract elongation during head motion. Journal of Experimental Biology jeb.247945.
October 2024
October 2024
Nyniane Steinkampf--Pellecuer started working as a PhD student in the lab!
The ANR JCJC grant (ANR-23-CE02-0018) funds her project to correlated the shape of the vocal system in birds with their sound production.
Welcome Nyniane!
May 2024
May 2024
I have just defended my Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, a French diploma that allows me to officially supervise doctoral students.
In this line, we are happy to welcome Nyniane Steinkampf--Pellecuer, who will join the team as a PhD student in October.
April 2024
April 2024
Kelsey Stilson just started working as a postdoc in the lab!
The Emergence Sorbonne University grant allows us to set up experiments to work on the biomechanics of bird vocalisation.
September 2023
September 2023
Laila Kestem officially started her PhD on filter-feeding systems in dabbling ducks.
We had the chance to meet the other members of the Nature4Nature consortium in Antwerpen for a week, full of fruitful discussions and fun.
July 2023
July 2023
I have been awarded an ANR grant to study birdsong biomechanics and evolution! This 4.5-year funding will officially start in April 2024.
Stay tuned for postdoc and PhD position opportunities.
June 2023
June 2023
So excited to have been awarded an Emergence Sorbonne University grant to hire an 18-month postdoc. This collaborative project with a long-time colleague Kristen Crandell from Bangor University will focus on the biomechanics of birdsong.
Please, spread the word and contact me if interested (deadline to apply: July 15th 2023 for a starting date this fall).
January 2023
January 2023
New publication!
So happy to share this commentary, part of the Centenary issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology, written with two amazing colleagues!
Provini, P., Camp, A. L. and Crandell, K. E. (2023). Emerging biological insights enabled by high-resolution 3D motion data: promises, perspectives and pitfalls. Journal of Experimental Biology 226, jeb245138.
New publication!
Kazemi, A., Kesba, M. and Provini, P. (2023). Realistic three-dimensional avian vocal tract model demonstrates
how shape affects sound filtering (Passer domesticus). Journal of The Royal Society Interface 20, 20220728.
This is the first paper of the Birdsong team 😇
December 2022
December 2022
New publication!
Leblanc, K., Pintore, R., Galvão, A., Heitz, E. and Provini, P. Foot adaptation to climbing in ovenbirds and
woodcreepers (Furnariida). Journal of Anatomy
Still in early view, but available in open access!
October 2022
October 2022
Unfortunately, my ANR grant was revoked for administrative reasons... It means that I won't be able to hire PhD students, postdocs or engineers right away... But I'm still working on other grant applications.
Stay tuned for better news!
October 2022
October 2022
I just joined the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle as a tenured Associate Professor and curator of the Digital collections of the MNHN.
I am now part of the Funevol team at the UMR MECADEV and my research will mainly focus on bird vocalisation and bioinspiration.
July 2022
July 2022
🥂🎉🎊 I just got awarded with an ANR grant to work on Birdsong biomechanics and Evolution! This 3.5 year funding gives me the opportunity to hire PhD students, Postdocs and Engineers! Don't hesitate to contact me if you are interested.
July 2022
July 2022
It's SEB meeting time again... but this year it's in person!
The birdsong team presented the preliminary data coming from the experimental acquisitions in Antwerp from last year.
February 2022
February 2022
New publication!
Pauline Provini, Alexandre Brunet, Andréa Filippo, and Sam Van Wassenbergh (2022)
In vivo intraoral waterflow quantification reveals hidden mechanisms of suction feeding in fish eLife 11:e73621.
July 2021
July 2021
The birdsong team presented their work at the SEB online meeting about the role of the supra-syringeal system in the Open Biomechanics session.
June 2021
June 2021
We went to the FunMorph Lab at Antwerp University to film 20 individuals of birds in front of their biplanar X-ray system. This allowed us to record the range of motion of the head/neck system and to visualize the associated motions of the trachea.
February 2021
February 2021
👏👏👏🎉🎉🍾🥂
Rachel Olson received the highly competitive Individual Fellowship from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions!
This will allow her to continue working with me at the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity for 2 more years.
Congratulations Rachel!
February 2021
February 2021
Another CT-scan trip!
I went to Montpellier MRI plateform (Université de Montpellier) to acquire CT-scans of bigger birds. Thanks Renaud Lebrun for the help!
November 2020
November 2020
We got our first CT-scans today. In spite of the lockdown, we were able to access the Plateforme Imagerie du Vivant with our birds.
34 scans in one day, not bad!
November 2020
November 2020
Alireza Kazemi joined the Birdsong team on the first day of the French second lockdown... In spite of this weird situation, we are glad to welcome him! He will work on the modelling aspect of the project, in close collaboration with the rest of the team.
September 2020
September 2020
Very happy to welcome Rachel Olson and Irina Delamare in the Birdsong team!
Rachel was brave enough to cross the Atlantic ocean during a pandemic. She will use her skills in XROMM and contrast-enhanced CT scans to work as a postdoc on birdsong biomechanics.
Irina is a Undergraduate student, doing a 5 months internship in the team. Her project will focus on acoustic analysis of a diversity of bird species.
Welcome to both of her!
March 2020
March 2020
I presented my project at the CRI Collaboratory seminar. Due to the Covid crisis, it didn't happen at the CRI, but online!
February 2020
February 2020
New paper in Systematic Biology journal with Elizabeth Höfling! 🍾
To hot or not to hop? The answer is in the bird trees
Have you ever wondered why certain birds are walking and others are hopping? This study tests the main hypotheses generally invoked to answer this question.
Is it because of the size of the bird? Or because of the way they use their legs?
Based on the exploration of more than a thousand bird species, the study suggests that birds living in trees are more likely to hop than strictly terrestrial species. Makes sense! If you want to move from one branch to the other, it is more efficient to jump or hop, instead of walking to the other branch.
The graphs included here show the evolutionary history of locomotion and arboreality of more than 1000 species of birds. We can see that the two traits are correlated.
You can find the full text of the study here.
January 2020
January 2020
I presented my project at SICB 2020 in Austin, Texas. It was a great opportunity to gain feedback and advertise for a Postdoc position! I am building a team of motivated people to work on birdsong biomechanics, on a modelling and experimental point of view.
Feel free to contact me if you are interested!
I also visited Julia Clarke's lab at the University of Austin. It was full of fruitful discussions about birdsong and a perfect way to end my stay in Austin.
January 2020
January 2020
I am starting my project about birdsong biomechanics at the Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI)!
October 2019
October 2019
I attended the 44th Congress of the French Biomechanics Society in Poitiers, France.
A special session was organized about animal biomechanics, where I presented my work on fish suction feeding.
October 2019
October 2019
A one day conference organized by TSI at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle to talk about fluid mechanics and the new PIV and 3D PIV systems of TSI. Thanks for organizing!
September 2019
September 2019
We are hiring!!
I am really excited to start my new group to investigate the biomechanics of bird song. Please have a look at the project summary and follow the post announcements: https://projects.cri-paris.org/projects/tY6OqgWS/summary
We are currently looking for a Postdoctoral fellow and Master students!
July 2019
July 2019
Another great meeting, the International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology (ICVM), held in the beautiful city of Prague.
Together with my collaborator Kristen Crandell, we organized a symposium entitled "Skeleton in moving fluids"
Look at the line-up of speakers and check Ariel Camp twitter account to see the beautiful sketchnotes she made during the session!
Unfortunately, she couldn't do one for her own wonderful talk...
July 2019
July 2019
Meeting season has just started!
I was invited at the SEB annual meeting symposium Sensory and mechanical factors underlying stable and agile control of legged locomotion organized by Monica Daley and Aleksandra Birn-Jeffery. I talked about my research on take-off and landing in birds.
Thanks for organizing this wonderful symposium!
March 2019
March 2019
I am thrilled to announce that I have been selected by the Centre de Recherche Interdisciplinaire (CRI) to become a research group leader in the Collaboratory for the next 3 years!!
As a long-term fellow I will have the amazing opportunity to build a team to work on my own project. We will study birdsong biomechanics to build voice prostheses for humans.
I am looking forward to working @ CRI, a dynamic and fun interdisciplinary environment!
January 2019
January 2019
Intense but insightful conference of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology (SICB) in Tampa, Florida.
As usual it was a real headache to choose between parallel sessions. The symposium about Comparative Evolutionary Morphology and Biomechanics in the Era of Big Data was definitely a highlight.
A special workshop about PIV methods was organized after the conference and was a perfect opportunity to meet people sharing an interest in Fluid dynamics. The hands-on session was really cool !
November 2018
November 2018
I have presented my work on fish suction feeding at a one-day meeting organized by the Muséum about 3D tomography. It was a great opportunity to learn about a diversity of use of µCT-scans, from functional morphology to education and vulcanology!
November 2018
November 2018
I am really happy that my work on take-off in Diamond dove was useful to Ben Parslew! He recently published a paper about jump in birds and received a broad interest from popularisation journalists!
You can see my little birds taking off in several articles: Pys.org, EurekAlert and Audubon Journal
September 2018
September 2018
I have been a member of the Society for Experimental Biology since 2011 and participated to 5 annual meetings. I have always received valuable feedback and support from the Society and met most of my close collaborators at SEB conferences, making those events particularly meaningful to my career.
The special place given to the young researchers and the safe and convivial atmosphere in the Open Biomechanics sessions of the annual meetings are values I am especially committed to and that I am willing to see persist. Moreover, as a young woman in a field mostly dominated by men, I found important to sign up for the SEB Biomechanics interest group committee and volunteered to join the committee a few months ago.
Today, I am honored to become a member of the SEB Biomechanics Interest Group committee !
I am ready to participate in the process of selection for the Bidder lecture or President's Medalists nominations, in judging posters or talks at the annual conferences and helping with chairing of the Open Biomechanics sessions. Overall, I am happy to work on behalf of SEB members to promote and develop biomechanics!
September 2018
September 2018
New publication in Royal Society Open Science! The shape of the back of the fish mouth does not influence the water flow (very much).
It is open access, so feel free to read it here
September 2018
September 2018
I had the opportunity to present the AVINECK Project in le Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle, to highlight the role of la Ménagerie in the project genesis and implementation.
August 2018
August 2018
Our paper entitled "Hydrodynamic performance of suction feeding is virtually unaffected by variation in the shape of the posterior region of the pharynx in fish" has been accepted in Royal Society Open Science!
August 2018
August 2018
Great conference in Vancouver, Canada, for the 27th International Ornithological Congress! The opening ceremony was fabulous, with people dressed-up as birds! Funny, beautiful and ornithologically accurate ;-)
Interesting experience, presenting an eposter, a combination of a small teasing talk and an electronic poster available during the entire conference.
July 2018
July 2018
Back from an amazing field trip in New Zealand where I studied kiwi birds.
After one week at Massey University doing dissections of different species of kiwis, I had the chance to film wild birds during the night! Thanks to Isabel Castro who made this possible ;-)
Dissecting in Massey University with Anick Abourachid
Field work in Ponui Island (New Zealand)
Our experimental set-up
July 2018
July 2018
SEB meeting in Florence, Italy where I received insightful feedback after my talk on intra-oral flow in carps!
June 2018
June 2018
One week of data acquisition at the University of Antwerpen, with Sam Van Wassenbergh. We performed a successful X-ray video acquisition session of feeding in Nile tilapias using the 3D2YMOX facility.
May 2018
May 2018
Field work in le Zoo Upie Jardin des Oiseaux near Valence, France with the Avineck team to film the tripedal locomotion of parrots! Thanks to Christelle, who convinced her parrot "Gabi" to use our special ladder, equipped with force plates in the scope of 3 high speed videocameras. Thanks to Alexandre, the director of the zoo for his help.
Synchronized highspeed X-ray videos of suction feeding carp
January 2018
January 2018
Great news!!
First successful data acquisition campaign at the University of Antwerp 3D2YMOX facility with Sam Van Wassenbergh! We managed to film carps in the view of 2 X-ray systems, using custom-made neutrally buoyant particle to follow the water flow inside the oral cavity.
January 2018
January 2018
Results of the experimental design of the planned x-ray PTV experiments, and the current modelling results, were presented at the Annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in San Francisco.
January 2018
January 2018
My paper on 3D kinematics during take-off in zebra finch and diamond dove is finally out! After two years of career break for medical reasons I am proud (and relieved) to see this paper published!
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