People

My research uses information ecology theory to better understand coevolution: I look at how variation in the way information is acquired and used influences the evolutionary outcomes of species interactions. Recent projects include exploring how social information use by predators facilitates the evolution of prey defences (e.g. ) and continuing my work on interactions between brood parasitic cuckoos and their hosts (e.g. ) by using a recent range expansion of reed warblers to test the importance of social information for plasticity. I also have a long-term project with (e.g. ) where we are now testing how ‘social resilience’ might enhance conservation outcomes. 

I explore how parental behaviour varies depending on social information gathered from heterospecific or conspecific individuals, using the brood parasite-host system of the Common cuckoo and the Common redstart as model.

I study the drivers and consequences of range shifts by investigating local and range-wide patterns of behavioural and genomic variation in the common reed warbler, a species that has undergone a rapid northward range expansion in the past ~150 years.

I study the causes and consequences of geographic variation in how hosts use information to make defence decisions against brood-parasitic cuckoos, and how this may affect their coevolutionary trajectories.

I study how parents resolve sexual conflict: how they behave in different contexts of parental care and how variation of the partner’s effort and/or personality traits influences their behavior and their chicks’ wellbeing. 

I am interested in the behavioural drivers and evolutionary consequences of birds moving and settling into new populations, and how we can use genomic tools to trace individuals back to their geographic origins.