PhD Research
The first part of my PhD looked at the links between cognition, personality and foraging plasticity and asked how these links are influenced by food value and predation risk. I used inhibitory control as the measure of cognition and exploration behaviour as the measure of personality. This study is published at the Journal of Animal Ecology (see here).
The second part of my PhD looked at diet variation between great tits of different ages and sexes. I used DNA metabarcoding and Next Generation Sequencing to establish the diet of great tits down to species level and explored differences between adults and nestlings, and males and females. I also looked at differences in diet between seasons and habitat types.
The final part investigated if cognition and personality link to diet differences between individuals.
Current Research
I am a postdoctoral researcher working at the Game and Conservation Trust and I am investigating the impact that releasing gamebirds has on the environment and other wildlife.
Previous Research
During my research masters I investigated how group size and dominance rank of jackdaws influenced the number of recruits to a mobbing event. A paper on the group size results is available in Biology Letters (see here).
Jackdaws at dusk | Alan McCarthy
Publications
1. Coomes JR, Davidson GL, Reichert MS, Kulahci IG, Troisi CA, Quinn JL. 2021. Inhibitory control, personality and manipulated ecological context are associated with foraging flexibility in the great tit. Journal of Animal Ecology. 00:1-14.
2. Coomes JR, McIvor GE, Thornton A. 2019. Evidence for individual discrimination and numerical assessment in collective antipredator behaviour in wild jackdaws (Corvus monedula). Biology Letters. 15, 20190380.
3. Davidson GL, Reichert, MS, Coomes JR, Kulahci, IG, de la Hera, I, Quinn JL. 2022. Inhibitory control performance is repeatable over time and across contexts in a wild bird population. Animal Behaviour.