Dr Helen Markland

Email: hm307 at cam.ac.uk

Position held: Former PhD Student (supervisor: Becky Kilner)

I am studying the conflicts faced by avian mothers arising over how much to invest in their young. Previous work on captive canaries has shown that females can invest different amounts in each egg that they lay and that this influences the way in which offspring beg. My PhD involves investigating whether this degree of maternal control over offspring behaviour extends into a natural context, where environmental conditions are more difficult to predict. I am working on a population of Blackbirds in the Botanical Gardens in Cambridge and hope to address a variety of questions through field experiments.

Before coming to Cambridge I did a Research Masters at York University. My major thesis involved working at Cornell University on a phylogenetic study of the Vitelline Warbler. Before this I spent time as a field assistant on a project in Arizona studying life history traits in forest birds.