Dr Hannah Rowland

I finished my PhD in November 2007 under the supervision of Mike Speed, entitled ‘The visual and behavioural ecology of countershading and other defences’. I am now a post doctoral research associate working on the NERC funded project to investigate the evolution of mullerian mimicry among defended prey species. My thesis explored the evolutionary ecology of signalling systems, studying both predator behaviour and prey defences. I studied the behaviour of both wild free-living birds in the field, and captive wild caught birds in aviary based experiments. I have extensive experience of handling, identifying and ringing (both metal and colour rings) British passerines. I work in the “Novel world” system at the University of Jyvaskyla, and have extensive experience training wild caught great tits (Parus major) to perform artificial foraging tasks in experimental aviaries (opening paper parcels which contain a slice of almond; see Rowland et al., 2007).