Current members
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Chris Cooney
Group Leader I did an Undergraduate degree in biology at the University of York, followed by a PhD in Zoology in the Edward Grey Institute at the University of Oxford. I moved to Sheffield as a postdoc before starting my own research group first as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, then a NERC Independent Research Fellow and now a Lecturer. I am fascinated by trying to understand the processes structuring large-scale biodiversity patterns. As a lab, we work on a range of broad-scale ecological, evolutionary and conservation-related questions, often using birds as a model system. We have a particular interest in trying to unpick the beautiful puzzle that is animal sexual signal diversity (e.g. colouration, song) and how evolutionary changes in these traits relate to the origin and persistence of new species. I am an Associate Editor at the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, a member of the ESEB Special Topic Network for the 'Integration of Speciation Research' and Sheffield Bioscience's Bio-AI Interest Group Lead. |
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Jasmine Hardie
PhD Student funded by UoS Broadly speaking, my research explores the causes and consequences of sexual signal evolution, with my current focus being on understanding macroevolutionary patterns of colour evolution in birds. I'm interested in how species' ecological, sexual, and social contexts have interacted to shape the immense diversity of plumage colour exhibited across the avian radiation. Animal sexual traits, such as plumage colouration, are posited to play an important role in the establishment of reproductive isolation between populations with potentially important implications for the accumulation of phenotypic and taxonomic diversity at broader scales. My work will explore these ideas using comparative approaches to investigate how interactions between species, and within avian communities more broadly, both shape and are shaped by plumage colour diversification.research seeks to understand the processes structuring large-scale patterns of biodiversity. As a lab, we work on a broad range of macro-scale ecological and evolutionary questions, often using birds as a model system. In particular, we are interested in understanding the interaction between sexual selection and ecology in driving evolutionary dynamics within birds and across the Tree of Life. |
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Robert MacDonald
PhD Student funded by ACCE2 DTP While completing my undergraduate in Physics and Earth Sciences at the University of Birmingham, a palaeontology module made me realise that evolutionary biology is really where it’s at. After a few years away from academia, I completed a masters in palaeobiology at the University of Bristol focusing on characterising the evolutionary relationship between colour vision and colouration in primates. Now, my PhD project will explore how animal sexual trait diversity is impacted by anthropogenically induced extinctions, how sexual traits might fundamentally influence species’ vulnerability to extinction or extirpation, and whether and how anthropogenic environmental change is driving the contemporary evolution of these traits. Together, this research will shed light on the future of biodiversity in our changing world. |
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Shriya Uday
PhD Student So much of biology fascinates me, but doing my masters at the University of Sheffield allowed me to find my niche interest, which is the overlap between colour and the wildlife trade. My research will explore a wide range of topics including the anthropogenic allee effect, the perception of rarity, the wild and captive bird trade, and the perceived attraction of birds all focused through the lens of colour. The main goal is to understand how bird colour can act as a predictor of protection and threat. Some smaller questions I'm interested in include quantifying colour metrics such as uniqueness and diversity. My hope is that this research will be a key contributer to conservation worldwide. |
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Brian Condori Villegas
PhD Student funded by ACCE+ DLA I am a biologist with a strong interest in Evolutionary Biology and the processes of speciation and adaptation approached from multiple perspectives, with a particular focus on bioinformatics, genomics, fieldwork, and laboratory work. Previous research has shown that species formation varies dramatically across the tree of life, contributing to differences in species richness among clades, regions, and through time. My PhD project aims to understand the factors promoting and constraining speciation rates over evolutionary time using genomics and ecological data. By uncovering the links between understudied population-level processes such as isolation and persistence, and patterns of speciation and species richness, this research will advance our understanding of speciation and may contribute to monitoring species for conservation efforts. As an avid ornithologist and bird ringer, I focus my research on birds, a fascinating taxonomic group that provides key insights into the mechanisms of speciation and famously inspired the Theory of Evolution. |
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Cole Reynolds
PhD Student funded by The Leverhulme Trust I completed an Integrated Masters at the University of St Andrews, which included a research placement at the University of Sheffield. Through my Masters projects I developed a passion for studying animal cognition and evolution. I joined the lab as a PhD student funded through a Leverhulme research grant. I am currently interested in answering questions related to how biases in the sensory systems of animals affect the evolution of animal visual signalling traits, e.g. sexual and aposematic signals. In particular, I aim to investigate whether animal visual signals have evolved to be efficiently processed by their intended receiver, and how this processing efficiency relates to memorability and human perceptions of beauty. My research currently focuses on birds because, as a taxonomic group, they capture some of the most diverse, striking, and eye-catching colour patterning amongst animals. I hope my research will help explain how the function of animal visual signals influences pattern design, convergence of colour patterning, and why humans tend to find animal signalling traits so beautiful. |
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Kathryn Harris
Research Technician funded by The Leverhulme Trust My undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Sheffield, really helped to shape my interest in Evolution, and confirmed to me that I wanted to be involved with furthering our understanding of it. Currently, my work within the Cooney lab mostly consists of collecting plumage colour data from photographs of birds. There are so many fantastic research projects going on within the lab group, and it’s great to know that this data will be useful to many of them. |
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Natalie Roberts
Research Associate funded by The Leverhulme Trust My research has focused on visually guided animal behavior, and I am broadly interested in the ways that sensory systems shape sensory signals and behavior. I completed my PhD at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where I studied how female visual signals impact male mate choice in species of traditionally sexually dimorphic fishes. As a postdoc, I have focused on the mechanisms by which vision can shape behavior, using models of insect color vision to design sticky traps that are more attractive to common agricultural crop pests (Swansea University) and, at my most recent position at Lund University, investigating how visual opsin gene expression shapes male preferences for different colored females in a species of damselfly. In my current role with the Cooney Lab, I am interested in understanding how sensory and perceptual biases shapes the evolution and function of animal visual signals. |
Affiliate members
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Joey Baxter
Co-I PhD Student at Sheffield (PI: Ben Hatchwell) My research focusses on the social behaviour of long-tailed tits, a cooperative species in which individuals often help to raise their family members’ chicks. In particular, I am investigating whether these birds use their sense of smell to identify relatives with whom they can cooperate. I will myself be cooperating with Chris and members of the Cooney lab to explore ways of analysing samples of preen oil, a smelly secretion that may broadcast information about relatedness between individuals. This work aims to build on our understanding of olfactory communication and social interaction among birds. |
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Yiqing Chen
Co-I PhD Student at ANU (PI: Damien Farine) I obtained my Bachelor's (2017) and Master's (2023) degrees in Ecology from Sun Yat-sen University in China. For my Masters’ thesis, I made phylogenetic comparative analyses on divorce in birds and studied breeding ecology of white-faced plovers at Paisha Island, China. During my MSc study, I also participated in the project on population dynamics of hair-crested drongos at Dongzhai National Nature Reserve in China. I have been awarded a 4-year scholarship from the China Scholarship Council and is now pursuing a PhD at the Australian National University. I have great interest in the behavioural ecology of birds and is conducting my PhD on the mixed-species flocking project. I am aiming on understanding how different types of bird societies—mixed-species flocks, multilevel societies, and cooperative breeding societies—fit together. |
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Chaim Elchik
Co-I PhD Student at Lancaster (PI: Sally Keith) Chaim’s research interests lie at the intersection of data science, artificial intelligence, and ecology. He is particularly interested in how novel computational techniques can be applied to large-scale visual datasets to answer fundamental questions about adaptation and biodiversity in the face of environmental change. His work explores the potential of AI to automate the extraction of ecological data from images and videos, providing new avenues for monitoring and understanding the natural world. Currently, his PhD project focuses on decoding biological colour and its evolutionary significance. By leveraging AI to analyse vast datasets of animal images, Chaim aims to investigate whether habitat degradation disrupts the evolutionary match between an animal’s colouration and its background. This research seeks to provide critical insights into how anthropogenic pressures are impacting adaptive traits, ultimately developing powerful new tools for assessing ecological change at a global scale. |
Lab alumni
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Frane Babarovic
PhD Student funded by the Royal Society (Primary supervisor: Gavin Thomas) |
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Yichen He
Research Associate funded by BBSRC |
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Eleftherios Ioannou
Research Associate funded by BBSRC |