What a great few days at #BOU2025. Loads of interesting & inclusive science, & a really supportive & friendly bunch of people. A great place to give the first talk of my PhD on #FalklandsShags & delighted to have been highly commended for my Bluesky thread 👇🏼

📸: @vulturecat.bsky.social

7/7 Huge thanks to @thomasbodey.bsky.social @bescott-abdn.bsky.social Ana Payo-Payo, Al Baylis, @raorben.bsky.social Amandine Gamble, @isotopesuk.bsky.social @ronamcgill10.bsky.social @jasonisotopes.bsky.social @quadratdtp.bsky.social @saerifi.bksy.social @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social

6/7 Key takeaway: it’s important to remember that all populations are made up of unique individuals & this ultimately affects the results & conclusions of our research; we especially need to consider this when making inferences from studies at the population or even species level.

5/7 Repeatability is really useful for comparing populations & addressing wider Qs, & indeed, we found specialists within our generalist spp. But only when considering multiple traits at the individual level can we start to identify nuance in variation, even for colonies with little repeatability.

4/7 Using Kvalseth’s Coefficient of Variation to study individual repeatability, we found evidence of repeatability & variation among individuals & traits at all colonies.

If only studying one colony/trait we'd reach different conclusions about how repeatable individuals are within a population.

3/7 We deployed GPS & TDR tags to explore foraging behaviour & collected feather & blood samples to explore diet through stable isotope analysis (d13C & d15N).

We extracted metrics & analysed repeatability using rptR, finding differences in repeatability both among & within colonies.

2/7 By studying breeding #FalklandsShags at several colonies we asked: Are specialist birds consistently specialist across a range of traits such as diet & foraging behaviour, or does it simply depend on the trait being studied?

1/7 Variation between individuals is important as it determines how adaptable to change a population might be. Even generalist spp are often comprised of specialist individuals, but specialisation is often only studied across single traits which is limiting.
#BOU2025 #ornithology #seabirds #ecology

Really great first day & a half at #BOU2025. Lots of interesting & superbly presented science so far - looking forward to hearing more tomorrow & sharing some of my own work on #FalklandsShags.

Really encouraging to have an emphasis on kindness & wellbeing in @theseabirdgroup.bsky.social ECR discussion on the Future of Seabird Research this morning. Thanks @jacquiglencross.bsky.social for pulling it all together & to the panel for insightful discussion!

#seabirds

I study the diet & foraging behaviour of #FalklandsShags, specifically looking at what might drive some birds to be specialists in these traits. A wonderful & understudied species!

A great first full day at #CoimbraSeabirds. What a fab bunch of clear & interesting talks, & beautiful posters lining the walls. Grateful to everyone who came to check out my poster & chat about #FalklandsShags 💙

#seabirds #ornithology #PhDlife

Excited to be in not-so-sunny Portugal for #CoimbraSeabirds 🥳
Looking forward to seeing everyone & presenting a poster with first #biologging analyses of my PhD - how repeatable are #FalklandsShags foraging behaviours? Are more birds specialising in larger colonies to avoid competition?

As always, a fabulous weekend on #HandaIsland. Heartening to see some healthy skua chicks despite the recent population crash, & really lovely to give the team the opportunity to meet their study birds up close & learn about the importance of long-term ringing schemes. #seabirds

Good to see plenty of #gulls in the Forth getting some of their five a day last weekend 🫛

Photo taken under licence. #seabirds #ornithology