As a behavioural ecologist, I aim to understand the mechanistic, ecological and evolutionary processes underlying how animals behave and adapt to the environment they live in. My fundamental research line focusses on the causes and consequences of sociality, covering aspects like social viscosity, dispersal, cooperation and altruism. My work combines broad conceptual and comparative work with detailed field observations, detailed physiological measures (such as condition and health measures), molecular analyses and experiments in a range of avian study systems. My main study system is in Southern Africa (Eswatini) where we study a whole community of birds to determine how they adapt to variation in their environment, including that of management practises (e.g. prescribed burns and bush clearing), climate change (e.g. how is predation and parental care affected by extreme heat), and the presence of other animals (which can be predators or food).
As ecologist / behavioural biologist, I am looking for a project to join; my interests are broad, and my experitise lies in detailed monitoring and studying birds in natural environments, with the goal to understand how animals adapt to their environment, including the vegetation, predator presence and presence of food and conspecifics. I have a long-term study population of many bird species, and experitise in monitoring, behavioural essays, measurements of physiology of birds (including immunology and disease), and ecological assessments. We also use a large-scale radio-tracking system to determine the spatio-temporal variation in fine-scale movement of individuals.