Watch CBBC Newsround’s report on the LIFE+ Great bustard reintroduction dietary project broadcast on Tuesday 29th January 2013.
Move over Gillan McKeith – scientists at the University of Bath are studying the droppings of great bustards to help understand their diet and nutrition with the aim of boosting their survival in a conservation project to reintroduce the birds to the UK.
Great bustards, the world’s largest flying bird and the county mascot for Wiltshire, became extinct in the UK in 1832. The LIFE+ Great Bustard Reintroduction Project is a partnership between the Great Bustard Group, RSPB, Natural England and the University of Bath, which has been working together to establish a self-sustaining population of Great Bustards in southern England.
The reintroduction project has been regularly rearing chicks imported from Saratov, Russia and releasing them once they are fully fledged at a secret location on Salisbury Plain. For the first time this year, they have also successfully hatched chicks from eggs brought over from Russia.
As part of the conservation project, Scott Gooch and Dr Kate Ashbrook from the University of Bath LIFE+ project monitoring team have been collecting droppings of the released birds to monitor what they prefer eating and how their diet changes through the year.
Scott Gooch explained: “Relatively little is known about the diets of great bustards living in the UK. Watching bustards in the wild can give you information on where they prefer to feed and how much of their time they devote to feeding, but by examining their droppings under a microscope we can discover the quantities of different insects and plants in their diet and how this changes across the year.”
Understanding what the birds eat in the wild will help the development of targeted habitat management for great bustards in the UK.
Dr Ashbrook explained: “The success of this reintroduction project depends on whether there is enough food to support great bustards through the autumn and winter.
“We believe there is, but it is important to monitor their diet so we can ensure there is sufficient suitable habitat for them as the population grows, and to establish more through agri-environment management if needs be.”
by Katrina James (UoB Press Officer)
Researchers from the University of Bath have established a mathematical model that goes some way to explain the very strange mating behaviour of the tiny Penduline tit.
This misbehaving European bird has a unique attitude to relationships, often resulting in fertilised eggs being abandoned and partners being ‘divorced’.
The male of the species starts the mating process by building an extremely sophisticated nest that hangs, like a pendulum, between forked tree twigs.
However, in a move that human men may sympathise with, the male bird leaves the finishing touches of the nest until a potential mate arrives. He uses the good nest foundations that he has built to lure her in, and then works with her to complete the dwelling to her specifications.
After completing the nest together, which can take up to two weeks and is lined with a couple of centimetres of soft cushioning to keep the eggs warm, in what appears a heartless move either the male or the female will ‘divorce’ its partner and abandon the nest.
Scientists have been baffled by this strange behaviour for decades, but now researchers have established a model that helps to explain the bird’s callous behaviour.
Professor Tamas Szekely, from the University of Bath’s Department of Biology & Biochemistry, has led the research. He said: “There is no logic to decide which parent leaves the nest; before this project all we knew for sure was that on no account did both parents stay and rear the young.
“Both parents have the same capabilities when it comes to raising their offspring, so the gender of the remaining bird makes no difference to the welfare of the chicks.
“The parent that leaves the nest will usually go on to mate again, with each ‘divorcing’ parent taking up to four or five new mating partners during a four month season!”
In order to explain the strange mating behaviour of the birds the researchers looked to calculate whether there was a biological benefit to either parent staying with the nest while the other left.
Professor Szekely said: “We tried to calculate how many offspring were produced in each circumstance – when the mother left, when the father left, or when both parents left the nest.
“However, because the bird that leaves can go on to have additional breeding partners during the course of the season, simple mathematical calculations aren’t possible.
This complication led the researchers to explore game theory models – a mathematical method for analysing calculated circumstances where an individual’s success is based upon the choices of others.
University of Bath PhD research student Dr Rene van Dijk, now [X] at the University of Sheffield, tested game theory models against the birds’ behaviour.
Dr van Dijk said: “The most applicable game to the birds mating behaviour was the ‘snowdrift game’ – used widely to explain the evolution of human cooperation.
“The game states that in a snowdrift, if two vehicles were stuck and their survival depended on them tunnelling to reach one-another, each would have equal gain from the digging of a tunnel. However each could also wait until the other party dug the tunnel, therefore eliminating any personal effort while maintaining their claim to the benefit.
“The behaviour of the birds is somewhat similar to this – they each gain genetically from breeding, but each bird could also gain from leaving this nurturing stage to their partner and instead start breeding again with another bird. We used the model to predict the behaviour of a population of birds, but also introduced a level of individual variation, and on measuring the observed reality we found it to be very similar.
“The birds therefore gamble on whether or not the other parent will stay with the offspring and raise them. The parent that remains puts in the most effort and loses out on the opportunity of further breeding during the season, but both parents gain a benefit.
“In some cases the gamble doesn’t pay off, with both parents leaving after the eggs are laid resulting in the nest being unsuccessful. However both parents are making the gamble that during a whole breeding season, some of their partners will make the decision to stay with the nest when they move on.”
The research highlighted that the only difference between the result of the mother’s and the father’s care is that the mother’s clutch will eventually be larger as she continues to lay fertilised eggs following the departure of the father. However, while this might explain why mother-care is more prevalent that father-care, it bears no testament to either parent’s ability to raise the chicks successfully.
Professor Szekely added: “The real beauty of this project was in demonstrating that not only can we use this method to develop a scientific understanding of animal behaviour, but that we can do this in situations where the particular behaviour appears to be quite simply crazy. Having proven that this technique works there are wide potential applications for further studies.”
The research was carried out in collaboration with the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary. Findings have been published this week in the journal ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences’.
Penduline tits are water-loving birds often seen in marsh areas and along rivers and canals. Their breeding season lasts for four months, from April through to July. The birds move to forest areas to breed, building pendulum-like nests hanging from the trees. The tits are common throughout continental Europe and a number of non-breeding migrant birds are spotted in the UK each year.
The University of Bath
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Great bustards, released as part of an ambitious project that is bringing the birds back to the UK, are causing a stir by conducting their own tours of southern England.
Andrew Taylor, Great Bustard LIFE Project Adviser for RSPB said; “This year’s released birds have been out for eight weeks now, and most are starting to roam more widely around their original release sites. However, some have been rather more adventurous than others! Black Six, named after the numbered black wing tag she carries, was last seen by project staff on the day of her release. She spent a couple of weeks on a neighbouring farm, but then went off the radar. At dawn on 5 November, a great bustard was seen flying south from Portland Bill in Dorset, and then the following lunchtime we received a report of Black Six in a field at South Huish, near Kingsbridge in Devon. She flew north an hour later. This week, 21 November, we received a report of another bustard, this time without wing tags, but with a radio transmitter, on land owned by The National Trust near Langton Matravers in south Purbeck. They certainly are getting around.”
Conservationists are looking forward to seeing where the bustards will fly to next, but are appealing to the public for help.
Trace Williams Great Bustard LIFE Manager for RSPB said: “Of the 17 birds in the wild we are able to track nine directly as they have radio and satellite transmitters. The remaining birds however have no transmitters so we need people who see them, and notice the very visible numbered wing tags, to let us know by calling 01980 671466 or reporting them via the website greatbustard.org.
To read more, visit www.bath.ac.uk/research/news/2011/11/24/bustards-on-tour/ and www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-15826625; to see footage of Black 06 in Devon, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdQ_blrTxh8.
The scientists studied nearly 50 different song birds during their research.Prof
Prof Tamas Szekely has recently published a papar in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, PNAS, with Professor Tim Devoogd and Dr Jordan Moore of Cornell University and Jozsef Buki of the Hungarian Ornithological Institute.
The comparative study finds a link between the size of bird brains and the complexity of the birds song. Read the University of Bath feature story on their website or you can find the article at the PNAS website.
Earlier this year, the UK Great Bustard Reintroduction won LIFE+ of 2 million Euros. Along with the good news, there were several features in the news papers, radio and TV. The LIFE+ project is a collaboration between, University of Bath, Great Bustard Group, RSPB and Natural England.
Feature from ITV West Country Tonight, reproduced with their kind permission.
Live interview with Al Dawes (GBG) and John Burnside for BBC Points West, reproduced with their kind permission.
Ceuta Snowy Plover Project has secured funding for the field season next year! Nuttall Bird Club and CONACyT will support their work.
Now they are looking for field assistents. If you are interested and are available from April to July, get in touch via their website:
Ceuta Snowy Plover Project or on Facebook or email Dr Clemens Küpper: ckuepper@oeb.harvard.edu
Snowy Plover Chick
On Tuesday 20th September 16:00 GMT, a live and interactive web TV programme from New York, with two of the key figures driving the response to the planet’s loss of biodiversity will offer the opportunity to answer your questions about the UNDB.
Ahmed Djoghlaf
Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the CBD and Monique Barbut, CEO and Chair of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), will discuss the CBD’s bold plans and the importance of taking action now to avert even more serious loss of biodiversity; how the entire UN system is driving to make the UNBD a lasting success, and the role of the GEF.
The show will be live and interactive so that you can send in your questions before and also during the live broadcast, or just watch the programme right from our site, or directly from the CBD website.
Fundación Conserva
Today is the second Birthday of Fundación Conserva, a non-profit organisation which aims to promote and protect biodiversity in Columbia. Fundación Conserva was set-up by Jorge Parra (along with his wife Marcela Beltran), who is studying for his PhD here in the Biodiversity Lab, University of Bath.
Current projects that the NGO is carrying out include Project Chicamocha, which aims to conserve two critically endangered endemic birds, the Niceforo’s Wren (Thryothorus nicefori) and the Chestnut-bellied Hummingbird (Amazilia castaneiventris). These birds are only found in the Chicamocha region in Columbia, an area of about 300,000 hectares, east of the Andes. This area contains many other endemic and rare species of flora and fauna and is under threat from habitat destruction and fragmentation through agricultural intensification, fires and infrastructural change, such as dams.
Chestbut-bellied Hummingbird
The project was initially funded by the Conservation Leadership Programme, but is a charitable organisation so also seeks further funding. If you are interested in finding out more about the work or helping to fund it, you can follow the project on Facebook or keep up to date with their work on Fundación Conserva website.
Over 6 months ago, the discovery of a fascinating new fossil species was reported in Nature and featured on the front cover (Liu et al., 2011). Bath Biodiversity Lab PhD student Ross Mounce re-analysed the data given by the original authors and found that they had significantly mis-represented the phylogenetic position of the new species (Diania cactiformis) in their results.
Together with his supervisor Matthew Wills they successfully initiated a Brief Communications Arising against the original Nature article, and this has now been published in Nature here under the title ‘Phylogenetic position of Diania challenged’.
Congratulations should also go to another group, Legg et al who also independently spotted many of the same problems and also got a BCA published criticising the original article, which is available here
Legg, D. A. et al. Lobopodian phylogeny reanalysed. Nature 476, E1 (2011). URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10267.
Mounce, R. C. P. & Wills, M. A. Phylogenetic position of diania challenged. Nature 476, E1 (2011). URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10266.
Liu, J. et al. An armoured cambrian lobopodian from china with arthropod-like appendages. Nature 470, 526-530 (2011). URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09704.
There is still time to submit an application to present a poster or to attend the first Spatial Ecology & Conservation Conference.
Birmingham University, UK 5th to 7th September 2011The AIM:
“The conference will bring together an international field of ecological scientists, practitioners and conservationists to review, discuss and evaluate the latest advances in spatial ecology and associated technologies, and how these can best be deployed to underpin conservation. Current gaps and future needs will also be identified, and a range of potential solutions discussed.”
There are 86 talks on all things spatial and conservation related, including 3 great keynote speakers: Peter Leimgruber, Director Conservation GIS, Smithsonian Institute, Florian Jeltsch (Head of Plant Sciences and Conservation, University of Potsdam), and Thomas Brooks (Chief Scientist at NatureServe).
Click here to get more information on how to attend the conference
or you can contact Dr. Mark O’Connell:
The conference is organised by Ecological Research & Training
Last week (4th July-9th July) most of the Macroevolution group attended the Systematics Association Biennial Meeting 2011, which was held at Queens University, Belfast. All three PhD students (Ross Mounce, Martin Hughes & Anne O’Connor) and Dr Matt Wills presented talks on their research.
The four talks given were:
Stratigraphic congruence through geological time and across higher taxa: what factors explain the variation?
Anne O’Connor
Morphological disparity and clade shapes through time
Martin Hughes
Are morphology-based cladograms of arthropods really less robust than those of vertebrates?
Dr Matthew Wills
Nullius in Calculo: On the Explicitness and Reproducibility of Cladistic Analyses
Ross Mounce
You can see Ross’s talk below:
Conference website: http://www.systass.org/biennial2011/
Ross and Anne at the nearby Ulster Museum, photographed by Martin
Great Bustard
The UK Great Bustard Reintroduction was featured on a Country File special on Wiltshire and Salisbury Plain. David Waters, director of the Great Bustard Group, was interviewed about breeding in the UK Great Bustard founder population.
The Great Bustard Group website has an story on the day Country File visited the release site.
We are excited to announce that Bath Biodiversity Lab PhD student Ross Mounce has just been awarded a significant travel grant in excess of £1000 to fund his travel next month to São Paulo, Brazil. This money is specifically made available via a competitive grant application process to students and staff at the University of Bath undertaking research in Latin American countries.
“The number and standard of applications received this year were very high, so this is a considerable achievement” — Dr Lisa Isted
An Open Letter has been circulated around the palaeontological research community in recent weeks calling for more free and Open data sharing of published research data via the Internet. This campaign was spearheaded by Ross Mounce, a PhD student from the Biodiversity Lab. Over 150 people have now signed the letter and it has since also been featured in a Nature news article . Ross hopes to influence editorial policy in a wide range of journals, as well as funding bodies, so that data is not unnecessarily and wastefully ‘lost in the mists of time’ in future.
Brown Bear, Romania
Prof Tamás Székely ran a course on conservation biology (21-24 January) for Master students at Babes-Bolyai University, Transylvania. The course was organised by Dr Peter Pap and Prof Zoltan Barta. The highlight of the course was a day in the field spotting a brown bear; Transylvania has one of the highest densities of brown bear population in Europe.’
Brown Bear 2, Romania
John Burnside with Great Bustards
Prof Tamás Székely appeared on ITV West Country Tonight and BBC Points West on Wednesday 19 January along with PhD student John Burnside and Al Dawes, Project Manager from the Great Bustard Group, to demonstrate how the satellite transmitters will work.
This has come as part of the Great Bustard Consortium (GBC) winning a EU LIFE+ bid to help fund new work on the UK Great Bustard Reintroduction for the next 5 years. The GBC consists of 4 member organisations: Great Bustard Group, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Natural England and the University of Bath (UoB). UoB is responsible for monitoring the birds once they are released.
Click here to read the full story as featured on the University of Bath news web-page.
Project Chicamocha, an initiative setup by Jorge Parra from the Biodiversity Lab, has won best monitoring and evaluation methodology awarded by Eco-Index. The aim of the project is to conserve two Critically Endangered Columbian dry forest birds, Niceforo’s Wren and the Chestnut-Bellied Hummingbird.
The project is implemented by an NGO called Fundación Conserva, Colombia which Jorge Parra founded.
Chicamocha Canyon
Social Behaviour, (ed.) Tamás Székely, Allen J. Moore and Jan Komdeur
Tamás Székely (University of Bath), Allen J. Moore (University of Exeter) and Jan Komdeur (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) have published a new edited book entitled, Social Behaviour: Genes, Ecology and Evolution.
It explores novel ways of looking at social traits using a systems biology approach and covers a broad range of taxa, from bacteria to humans. This book will appeal to readers from a wide range of disciplines especially those interested in the development and history of the field.
Download a flyer for the new Social Behaviour Book
Spoonbill Sandpiper
Prof Tamás Székely has drawn attention to conservation measures needed to protect the critically endangered Spoon-billed sandpiper in their wintering areas in Myanmar. Full article
A research project led by Richard Young (Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust/University of Bath) to assess the status and biology of a rare ‘living fossil’ on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola has been featured by the BBC and other news media. The Hispaniolan Solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus) is one of the world’s few venomous mammals, and it is threatened by habitat degredation and invasive predators such as dogs. See recent footage of the Solenodon, including an interview with Richard, here:
Great Bustard. (photo. John Burnside)
We are excited to announce that the UK’s reintroduced Great Bustards have successfully produced chicks for the second year in a row. Prof Tamas Szekely and PhD researcher, John Burnside, from the Biodiversity Lab have been working in collaboration with the Great Bustard Group (GBG) to help monitor the Great Bustards released in the UK.
Read about it on the University of Bath’s news page, or you can follow the project from any of the sites listed below:
GBG website
GBG Facebook Group
GBG Twitter
Sign up for GBG newsletter
BBC news
Ross Mounce
First year PhD student Ross Mounce has won a travel bursary to present his research at a prestigious international meeting in Hawaii next week. Ross is interested in how best to reconstruct the evolutionary tree of life. Delegates at “Hennig” all share this goal, and he will present his paper alongside many world leaders in the field. “Biologists use data from anatomy and molecules to retrace the course of evolution, but often there is a problem: different molecules and different aspects of anatomy tell different stories. One solution is to pool all partitions of the data, but sometimes they pull in such different directions that it is very difficult to reconstruct a tree.” Ross has implemented new methods for measuring this conflict, focussing on the vertebrates (e.g., fish, reptiles, birds and mammals). Received wisdom holds that the anatomy of the head is a more reliable guide to evolution than the rest of the body. But is this really true? “Over the last five months I’ve used over 5,000 hours of supercomputer time to help produce my results. Surprisingly, there is remarkable agreement between the head and tail signals in the majority of the sixty case studies I’ve investigated. This isn’t necessarily what we expected, and contrasts with the picture typically emerging from different molecules. However, it’s excellent news for biologists and palaeontologists trying to unravel evolution from incomplete anatomical material.” Ross’s research is part of a larger Leverhulme Trust funded project running for the next three years within Matt Wills’s lab in Biology & Biochemistry. “As a group, we are all asking important questions about the nature of evolution at the broadest scale. To see the really big picture, we have to combine data from living organisms with what we know from the geological record. This allows us to address many of the key issues. Why do some groups go extinct and not others? How does evolution make some of its biggest transitions – fish onto land and dinosaurs into the air? And are there overarching trends in the history of life: towards increasing complexity, for example? Ross’s work is exciting because it shows that our attempts to answer these questions won’t be derailed by holes in the data.” The Leverhulme Trust was established in 1925 under the Will of the first Viscount Leverhulme. It is one of the largest all-subject providers of research funding in the UK, distributing funds of some £50 million every year. For further information about the schemes that The Leverhulme Trust fund visit their website at www.leverhulme.ac.uk
In a recent paper published in Science, Simon Stuart (visting professor at the Biodiversity Lab) and colleagues from BirdLife International and the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (Unep-WCMC) outline the spectacular failure of national governments to meet targets for biodiversity loss that were internationally agreed in 2002. Read about the findings at the BBC website: click to find out more.
Prof Tamás Székely and Biodiversity lab alumnus Dr Martin Alejandro Serrano Meneses, and Dr Alex Cordoba-Aguilar have run a well received and successful workshop on sexual conflict for 21 postgraduate students at the Universidad Autonoma de Tlaxcala in Mexico.
![James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Parus.caeruleus.-.lindsey.jpg "James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")
Blue Tit
Dr Peter Long & Prof Tamás Székely have founded a specialist GIS research and training lab in the University of Toliara, Madagascar, to transfer GIS skills to local students working on environment and conservation. The new lab is a results of long-term research into conservation of wetland birds and spatial social economics with long-term collaborator, Dr Sama Zefania. The work is supported by The Leverhulme Trust and the Royal Geographical Society.
Dr Freya Harrison’s recent meta-analysis of parental compensation behaviour which was published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology has been profiled on a news website in Hungary.
Read more 
Kentish Plover
Dr Clemens Küpper from the Biodiversity Lab and researchers in Sheffield have used molecular evidence to confirm a species level split in the long debated American snowy plover and European kentish plover identity. The two species were previously thought to be varieties of the one species. The reseach has recently been published in AUK.
Dr Mark O’Connell and Dr Rene Van Dijk recently returned safely from a biology field course they were running in Honduras for students from the University of Bath. At the end of the field course there was an unexpected coup causing the group to be trapped in Honduras under a nationwide curfew. You can read more about it on the university website:
