My NERC-funded PhD started in 2009 and is co-supervised by Jim Reynolds and Phillip Cassey and will investigate the adaptive significance of eggshell colouration. The study will involve field work at Chaddesley Woods, in which food supplementation of small passerines has been performed since 2006, and will link to the projects of several other PhD students examining the effects of supplementary feeding on avian breeding biology.

The aim of this project will be to investigate whether eggshell pigmentation of Blue and Great Tits is correlated with the calcium availability in the environment and whether this has implications on parental care.

After graduating from Cardiff University in 2006 with a BSc (Hons) in Zoology, I spent two years working as a field assistant on various projects both abroad and in the U.K. I then undertook an MSc in Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology at the University of Exeter. As part of this course, I completed a research project focusing on the effects of eggshell colouration on parental care, and was fully mesmerized by the subject.