Current Appointments:
Research Fellow in Avian Influenza Ecology, University of Leeds
Lundy Sparrow Project, Imperial College London
Principal Ornithologist, Mott MacDonald Ltd.
Associate Editor, Ringing and Migration
Member, British Ornithologists Union Engagment Commitee
Member, Bird Survey and Assessment Steering Group
Chair of Severnside Bird Ringing & Research Group
Research Themes
My research interests are broad, but mostly focus on the varied ways that birds interact with each other and their environments. As such, my work spans social behaviour, communication and sensory ecology, contagion, and the role of the environment on behavioral traits. A lot of my work involves multidisciplinary teams and approaches - mixing classic ecology with physics and mathematics. I am lucky to have always had an enthusiasm for birds (and watching birds) and so a lot of my research starts by watching birds in the field. I am interested in building on descriptive studies to support theory in ecology and evolution.
I have detailed some of the studies (and systems) I work with below;
Social Networks
My research is focused on varied ways that birds interact - and the causes and consequences of these interactions. I use social network graphs and mixed-effect models to study the nature of these relationships, where edges represent either an association (co-occurrence in time/space) or sexual contact. More recently, I have used social networks to study contagion events, focusing on the global spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Study Areas:
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HAPAI) is an emerging threat to conservation, to global economies and food networks and to human health. Despite thirty years of research, we do not fully understand the drivers of prevalence in wild birds, and recent outbreaks continue to confound historic routes of transmission. Alongside Dr Alastair I. Ward and Dr Josh Firth I am interested in how the behaviour of birds at the community and species scale, influences the transmission of HPAI through co-occurrence networks.
Lundy Island House Sparrows: The long-term study on a closed population of house sparrows on Lundy Island is one of the longest genetic pedigrees of a wild bird on earth, and all of the birds are studied from egg to death. As such, Lundy is an exceptional system for empirically testing on the evolution of animal behaviour. I first studied the social behaviour of house sparrows on Lundy as part of my PhD in Quantitative Modeling in Ecology and Evolution at Imperial College London, supervised by Dr Julia Schroeder, Dr Tim Evans & Professor Terry Burke.
Inherent to a complete genetic pedigree is the monitoring of all breeding attempts, and the determination of paternity for all offspring produced in a population. I am interested in the evolutionary ecology of social traits and their influence on reproductive decision-making, with a focus on female extra-pair reproduction. Female promiscuity presents a paradox for evolutionary ecologists, as it carries obligatory costs to females, while offering limited benefits to both her and her offspring.
Signalling and Communication
I am interested in the varied and complex ways in which birds communicate information. Although this links to the projects above, this body of work is more focused on the mechanism of information transfer, particularly in the context of environment.
Study Areas:
Physical and Vocal Signals: I am interested in the varied ways birds communicate, and especially so in difficult environmental circumstances - for example, at night or underground. In those circumstances, light is scarce and so organisms must find novel ways to signal (or conceal) information.
I have explored these adaptions in the bill plate of Atlantic puffin - that fluoresces yellow-green under ultra-violet light - and Similar observation were made earlier and later. The communication hypothesis is complex because it seems unlikely that emission spectra is detectable in natural light environments. Instead we considered the possibility that the described florescence is an artifact of the development process (perhaps a bio-accumulation of Green fluorescent protein (GFP), abundant in marine copepods. However, this does not consider how UV absorption might be interpreted in the context of avian vision, and recent research has suggested some degree of detection.
I have also described specific adaptations to signalling in low light environments in the tail feather spots of the woodcocks Scolopax sp. that are exceptionally bright among birds. Woodcock archive this through a series of adaptations from the macro to nano scale. In our multidisciplinary paper in 2023, we described these adaptations and compared the reflectance spectra against a database of other white plumages.
To a lesser extent, I also work on the calls of shearwaters, a group of nocturnal seabirds that breed in high density colonies, and the information therein. This work is mostly through supervision of project students, and has theoretical application in conservation monitoring.
Light Environment and Eye-type: If the works described above are focused on the specific mechanisms of communication, I am also interested in this subject from a macro-evolutionary perspective. For example, visual signals are often interpreted in research from the perspective of the researcher, using physical descriptions of colour or raw measurements from a spectrophotometer In reality, the varied visual systems of animals, and light environments from which they signal, may mean that they interpret light reflectance differently. With collaborators, I have used large datasets of macro-ecological traits and contrast measurements to test hypotheses related to these arguments.
I am looking to develop these ideas further.
Conservation and Population Biology
I work on several long-term conservation monitoring projects. Where the Lundy project is focused on behavioural ecology, these are conservation projects, setup to measure the influence of demography, , like survival or productivity, on population trends. Much of my involvement with these projects is part of specific groups - the RSPB Twite Recovery Project, Christmas and Christmas and Severnside Bird Ringing Groups. I have an ‘S’ level bird ringing permit issued by the British Trust for Ornithology, and chair Severnside Ringing Grouo and so I am also involved in general species monitoring, and training others to do the same, through the British ringing scheme.
Study Areas:
Mark-Recapture Data:
Beyond the general bird ringing objectives of the BTO, I am involved in projects for several ringing groups, conservation charities and SNBCs on a broad range of species, and with different objectives. Including projects on the productivity of gulls nesting on Steep holm Island, on the reproductive behavior of Starlings on Lundy (and alongside sparrows, see above), on the ecology of white-eyes living in man-made rainforest, and on a (now) small breeding group of twite in England (below).
Twite in the UK and Ireland linaria flavirostirs pipilans:
Twite linaria flavirostris breed in Northern Europe, including, at their southern extent, in the English Pennine hills. They have an interesting biogeography, with multiple groups separated by large areas of absence all with differing ecologies. The number of twite in England has declined from ~164 breeding pairs in 2013 - a 75% decline since a baseline survey in 1999 - to <10 in 2021. Since 2013, I have coordinated the project monitoring twite breeding in England, and more recently, on a healthier population wintering on the mull of Oa, Islay, Scotland, and Shetland. Although I am interested in their long-term conservation, twite are a social species and I am also interested the nuanced ways that their social behavior influences how disjunct groups interact across their range, and their population trends. In 2017, I used my own data from this system for a research degree at the University of Nottingham - on genetic relationships between disjuct groups of twite, supervised by Dr Kate Durrant and Professor Angus Davison. 2017 - 2018.
Bird Survey Methods and Data Assessment
Commercial Best Practice:
The results of a bird survey (as part of an Environmental Impact Assessment) inform development, planning and subsequent mitigation decisions, and so inappropriate survey methods may negatively impact the conservation of wild birds. For a number of years I have worked on improving standards of commercial bird surveys - through defining a minimum competency for the surveyor pool, revising the methods by which birds are surveyed, and providing consultants with access to guidance and competent surveyors. I have had some involvement with academic projects that test the effectiveness of established methods, or develop new guidance. I act as a technical advisor to industry, and my partner and I run a small business, Skopeo that advises environmental consultants on best practice for birds and resources surveys.