January 01, 2020

Together with Michael Cant, Faye Thompson, Darren Croft (all Exeter), Rufus Johnstone (Cambridge), Dan Franks (York) and a team of many more -- I will be investigating the influence of intergroup conflict on decision-making in a wild system using drone footage, and basing our investigation on solid theoretical models. 

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Basically a dream come true! Stay tuned for more on this!!

September 09, 2019

We know that animals make collective decisions on their direction and the timing of their decisions. What about the speed of travel too? If they can't come to an agreement, the group will split! See Steve, Dora, Emily and me tackle this question in our new paper in Animal Behaviour here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347219302830

September 22, 2019

Hugely grateful to Steve, co-supervisors, colleagues and close friends and family, for all the help and support that made finishing my PhD possible. 

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On to new adventures,

1) Cool new temporary job writing codes as a data analyst! (awesome to get a feel for industry)

2) Finishing papers from the PhD

3) Starting new ones! I have a few leads for some potentially fruitful collaborations which I am following up on

4) Applying to Post-docs

5) Writing grants to secure my own postdoc

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Phew! Better get cracking eh? 

October 23, 2018

My humongous thanks go out to everyone involved in helping me get to this point, Things can go terribly wrong in people's PhD data collection, so I feel very humbled and lucky to have so much good quality data. Particular thanks go to Steve who has provided ideas, beers (and not to mention a royal society grant which funded the acquisition of the new loggers), Lara Nouri, who's friendly face has kept me company down at the pigeon lofts, and as usual my dearest Liz, who (somehow!) put's up with me. Thanks all, next post will be conferency and definitely heavy on the pigeons.

September 23, 2017

I am jetting off to Germany to get involved in the biggest international biologging conference: Biologging 2017, situated in beautuful Konstanz. Following this I will be visiting the Farine lab to work with his group and get involved in any exciting opportunities which may arise.

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I am looking forward to hearing everyone's talks as well as contributing to the conference, with my own talk on pigeon flight dynamics! 

January 17, 2017

The skills I learned at this workshop will undoubtedly form a huge part of my PhD work, and I am so grateful to Damien and his group for putting on this amazing workshop.

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As if it couldn't get any better, the whole thing was situated in the beautiful village of Moeggingen. Which was picturesque and covered in snow.  :)

September 18, 2016

Indeed, it is quite something. Dr. Steve Portugal will be my lead supervisor as I help uncover the mysteries of group structure and collective behaviour using pigeons as a starting system. Dr. Dora Biro and Dr. Emily Shephard's co-supervision will be invaluable: I envisage Dr. Biro's experience and skills linking group structure with function in collective systems to combine well with Dr. Shepard's expertise in bird movement and quantification of energy expediture to give a clearer picture of the costs and benefits of group life. These costs and benefits will place the work in a good position to answer current and important questions in behavioural ecology such as how behavioural diversity is maintained, and how different evolutionary histories produce the differences in social systems observed across the animal kingdom. I know Steve is as excited as I am!  :D 

I've had my abstract accepted for the Collective Motion 2016 conference, hosted by David Sumpter's group at Upsalla University. I will be giving a 15 minute presentation of my work on collective decision making in vertebrates (see my research page for more).  So... excited! :-) :-) :-)

June 26, 2016

I will be attending the ISBE conference. Abstract sent so fingers crossed now!!

March 29, 2016

I have started a citizen science project on the pigeons in my local area. I hope to gether data on group size, food availability and frequency of flocking bouts to learn more about social dynamics in pigeons  

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ZRF3JZH