PhD student researching rabbit social behaviour in Exeter • previously blue tit nests in St Andrews and Soay sheep in Edinburgh • (she/her) 🌿
Libby Chapman
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✍️ Co-authors: Sophie Edwards, @evelynalexander.bsky.social, Sue Healy
📸 Blue tit photos: Mark Pitt
📖 Full paper: doi.org/10.1093/behe...
CRAB Posters at #ASABSpring2026 from @helephantmylne.bsky.social , Bryony Jenkins, Eleanor Benson, Sophie Pettit , and Henry Moreau-Smith
(Pictures taken in the very rare gaps when they didn't have customers)
Late-reporting, but last year some of our CRABbers headed up to Edinburgh to present their posters at the @asab.org Winter meeting. Well done all! @libbychaps.bsky.social @charli-ocean.bsky.social and @ Manuela Carona R
Festive Season in CRAB, which we celebrate with a quiz and by rediscovering the password to the CRAB Bluesky account.
Implications of large herbivore extinctions! For fans of megafauna past and present 🦣🌾🍄
We also found that unsuccessful females were more likely to move to a different nestbox the following year, a change that was also associated with mating with a different male.
This work adds to our understanding of the role of experience in avian nestbuilding. The effect of reproductive experience previously shown in captive birds is strong enough to be detected in a wild population and the changes birds make can improve their fitness.
Super happy to share some work from my masters project with @cogwild.bsky.social 🪺
Using six years of data from blue tits, we show that wild birds make decisions about their nest design based on their reproductive success in the previous year.
📄 doi.org/10.1093/behe...
We found that females who failed to fledge chicks in one year used less plant material in their next nest, instead focusing on mammal fur and feathers which insulate developing eggs and chicks. This change improved their fledging success in the following year! 🌿🪶
@ingeridh.bsky.social gave a great talk about her work investigating squirrel caching behaviour using accelerometers in a very interesting session led by Hemal Naik & Ebi Antony George on using machine learning in animal behaviour research🧑💻🐿️
