Prof Nick Davies FRS

My research is in Behavioural Ecology, the study of how behaviour evolves in response to selection pressures from ecology and the social environment. My past studies include: territory economics in pied wagtails; contest behaviour and mate searching in butterflies and toads; parent-offspring conflict and the transition to independence in young birds; sexual conflict and mating systems in dunnocks and alpine accentors.

My current work focusses on the interactions between cuckoos and their hosts, including: how cuckoos trick their hosts and how the hosts defend themselves against cuckoo parasitism; how cuckoo trickery and host defences co-evolve; how cuckoo chicks manipulate hosts when they beg for food; how hosts vary their costly defences in response to levels of parasitism, by both individual and social learning.

I encourage PhD students and post-docs to come up with their own ideas for research. Recent topics include: deceptive signalling by drongos; parental care in hornbills; cooperative breeding in Australian babblers; sexual selection in tooth-billed bowerbirds; cuckoo-host coevolution.

I discuss how I first became interested in research and describe some of my work in an interview with Jim Al-Khalili on 'The Life Scientific', broadcast on Radio 4.

Key publications:

Davies, N.B. (2015). Cuckoos and their victims: an evolutionary arms race. Croonian Lecture, Royal Society. https://royalsociety.org/pastevent/?requestedPath=%2fscience-events-and-lectures%2f2015%2f05%2fcuckoos-and-their-victims%2f

Davies, N.B. (2015). Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature. Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/cuckoo-9781408856567/

Thorogood, R., & Davies, N.B. (2013). Reed warbler hosts fine‑tune their defenses to track three decades of cuckoo decline. Evolution, 67(12), 3545–3555. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.12213

Davies, N.B., Krebs, J.R., & West, S.A. (2012). An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology (4th ed.). Wiley‑Blackwell. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/An+Introduction+to+Behavioural+Ecology%2C+4th+Edition-p-9781405114165

Welbergen, J.A., & Davies, N.B. (2009). Strategic variation in mobbing as a front line of defense against brood parasitism. Current Biology, 19(3), 235–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.12.041

Davies, N.B. & Brooke, M. de L. & Kacelnik, A. 1996. Recognition errors and probability of parasitism determine whether reed warblers should accept or reject mimetic cukoo eggs. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, 263, 925-931. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1996.0137

Davies, N.B., Hatchwell, B.J., Robson, T., & Burke, T. (1992). Paternity and parental effort in dunnocks (Prunella modularis): how good are male chick‑feeding rules? Animal Behaviour, 43, 729–745. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-3472(05)80200-4

Davies, N.B. & Brooke, M. de L. 1988. Cuckoos versus reed warblers: adaptations and counteradaptations. Animal Behaviour 36, 262-284. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-3472(88)80261-0

Davies, N.B. and Houston, A.I. 1981. Owners and satellites: the economics of territory defence in the pied wagtail. Journal of Animal Ecology 50: 157-180. https://doi.org/10.2307/4034

Kilner, R.M., Noble, D.G., & Davies, N.B. (1999). Signals of need in parent‑offspring communication and their exploitation by the common cuckoo. Nature, 397, 667–672. https://doi.org/10.1038/17746