| The central theme of my research is life-history evolution in birds and the relationship between life-history strategies and the evolution of other behaviours, particularly family-group living and cooperative breeding. My research on cooperative breeding and helping behaviour has been mostly conducted on the sociable weaver Philetairus socius, a colonial cooperative breeder from southern Africa. This has been done in collaboration with several people, in particular, Claire Doutrelant (CEFE-CNRS, France) and Morné A. du Plessis (PFIAO, University of Cape Town, South Africa). I am currently also undertaking comparative work to study the evolution of family group living in collaboration with Michael Griesser (Uppsala University, Sweden).
My other major research topic is trying to understand broad patterns of variation in life-history and behaviour, particularly on what concerns evolution on islands and latitudinal patterns. I am currently using Museum collections and literature-based data to investigate whether there are global patterns of adaptation on islands regarding life history traits, morphology and sexual ornaments. For this I collaborate with Claire Doutrelant, Arnaud Gregoire and Pierre-André Crochet (CEFE-CNRS, France). In addition, I have an ongoing field study in the gulf of Guinea islands, West Africa, to study what factors underlie the adaptations to the island environment. More specifically, in this region, I am currently investigating the relationship between blood parasite levels and the life-history characteristics, secondary sexual traits and mating systems of several bird species. This is done in collaboration with Martim Melo (CEFE-CNRS, France) Jon Beadell and Robert Fleischer (both at the Smithsonian Institute, USA) and Staffan Andersson (Goteborg University, Sweden). | 
