ANBG Theatrette,
Clunies Ross Street Acton ACT 2601
Canberra, 2601 Australia
Canberra, 2601 Australia
Superb Fairywrens lead complex social lives and have a multilevel social structure in the non-breeding season as well as the breeding season. Xingyi and Samuele will discuss the decisions individuals make in their community.
Abstract
Superb fairywrens, the 2019 Birdlife Australia Bird of the Year, have complex social lives during the breeding season, with helpers helping a dominant pair. While a wealth of knowledge is available for the breeding behaviour, it was only very recently that their multilevel social structure was discovered during the non-breeding season. These complex social structures were only thought to occur in large-brained mammals like primates. The superb fairywren multilevel society is organised in three hierarchical levels, with breeding units aggregating with each other to form supergroups, which in turn coalesce to form communities. In this talk, Xingyi and Samuele will explore how individuals make decisions on who to associate with, how they decide to move, who leads these movements and what determines their choice to follow. Moreover, they will showcase their research on the consequences of living in a structured society both in winter and the following breeding attempts.
Biography
Xingyi Jiang is a PhD student at Beijing Normal University. She is currently visiting Damien Farine’s lab at ANU, studying collective movement and decision-making in the superb fairywren multilevel society.
Samuele Ramellini is a PhD student at the Australian National University. He is currently working on the drivers and consequences of living in the superb fairywren multilevel society.
One-hour talks are held at 12.30 pm every Thursday from February to November. We welcome donations by gold coins, notes, or electronically. The Friends use donations to support Gardens’ programs and development and thank all those who have donated.
Please note: unless otherwise indicated, talks are in the ANBG Theatrette.
It is a good idea to reserve a seat at the talks that you wish to attend; several talks are booked out very quickly. The booking link for each talk is on the www.friendsanbg.org.au/calendar entry for the talk. Bookings can be made about 30 days in advance until Wednesday night before the talk.
The Friends of the ANBG thank the speakers who volunteer their time and talents to further the knowledge of all attending events in the Gardens. Some summaries or PowerPoint presentations of Thursday talks are available to Friends at the ANBG Library. Please direct queries about the talks to the Thursday Talks Team: email talks@friendsanbg.org.au