Dr Joe Tobias gave a talk at a BOC meeting on 12 November 2018
We have posted a video at the BOC YouTube channel of a talk presented by Dr Joe Tobias, Reader in Biodiversity and Ecosystems at Imperial College London, based at Silwood Park. Joe gave a talk entitled The Shape ofB, and Why it Matters.
Joe Tobias opened his talk with a title slide showing a murmuration of starlings.
Birds come in an astonishing range of shapes and vary widely in size. During the last century, the field of ecomorphology began to shed light on the way birds are shaped by habitat preferences and foraging behaviour. However, studies were focused on relatively few species and left many gaps in understanding. Joe’s talk explored recent research based on detailed measurements of approximately 99.7 percent of the world’s bird species. The expansion of information combined with spatial, phylogenetic and ecological data is helping to answer some fundamental questions about how bird diversity arises, and how it can best be conserved.
A ‘groovy’ slide of bird traits put into nine dimensions and split out into their different groups of diets.
