Behavioural Ecology and Evolution Lab
Our research combines studies of behaviour and genomics to understand the genomics of behavioural traits in birds and their importance in reproductive isolation among related species. Our primary study system is tinkerbirds, which are African barbets found in forest and savannah throughout Sub-Saharan Africa
Our collaborative work with Reto Burri and his group on feather colour evolution in Oenanthe Wheatears has been published in Science!
The study (Lutgen et al. 2025) demonstrates how convergent patterns may evolve through a combination of independent mutations, introgression and recombination within a single gene. In this way, related species may evolve distinct combinations of plumage patterns on different body parts. Read the paper here:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado8005
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OUR LATEST RESEARCH
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Following on from our work on the genomics of vocal rhythm described below, we've focused on testing variation in song and plumage experimentally. See the latest update on the ROBOTINK project!
Much of our recent work has focused on the innate songs of tinkerbirds. In Sebastianelli et al. (2024), published in Nature Communications, we show that vocal rhythm has a genetic basis linked to two genes known to affect human speech. Read the paper here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47305-5 and see a video from Springer Nature on our work here:
https://youtu.be/Iqj5WIuRqh8?si=PqFWQXrq5gqP0eSi
See video below for an example of a yellow-fronted tinkerbird singing.
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© 2022 by Alex Kirschel, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cyprus