A lot of what I post on this blog concerns local wildlife sightings and endeavours, but when I'm not out birdwatching I undertake research on the causes and consequences of variation in age structure in natural populations (for example, if there are many old versus many young individuals in an animal population, how does this affect how the population socialises, performs reproductively, and interacts with its environment?). I recently had the pleasure of presenting some of my findings at a Royal Society scientific meeting themed on Age and Society. This was a great privilege as these meetings have been running since the 17th Century, and have previously held talks from some of the most eminent scientists including Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and Charles Darwin. I got incredibly useful feedback, and it was very encouraging to see scientists working on the most contemporary challenges in ecology and social evolution. My talk can be found below from 1:48:30.

New OxPods episode is out! Found on our website, Spotify, Google and Apple podcasts.

The trajectory of evolving species is strongly affected by the environment in which they exist, and one particularly interesting example of this is when organisms evolving on islands differ predictably from their continental counterparts through a suite of morphological and behavioural traits, known as ‘The Island Syndrome’. But what is it that’s so special about islands that leads to this process, and what can biologists learn from the species that exhibit the syndrome?
 
In this episode of OxPods, I chat to Prof Sonya Clegg, an associate professor of evolutionary ecology at the University of Oxford who studies the processes that promote species divergence