Members of the Evolutionary Ecology group have found cracks in the long-standing theory that the number of eggs animals have – and the size of those eggs – is related to how much parental care they invest in their offspring.

Recently a host of new species have been discovered from Mt. Mabu in northern Mozambique as part of a RBGKew Darwin Initiative award entitled Monitoring and Managing Biodiversity Loss on South-East Africa's Montane Ecosystems’.

Desert locusts are infamous for their swarming behaviour when they migrate en masse and consume everything in their path, but usually they occur in a form that actively avoids other locusts and live solitary existences. Which one of these lifestyles poses bigger challenges and requires more brain power?

Using field experiments in Africa and a new computer model that gives them a bird’s eye view of the world, Dr Claire Spottiswoode and Dr Martin Stevens have discovered how a bird decides whether or not a cuckoo has laid an egg in its nest.