Research Assistant

Current Members | Former Members | Photos


Nicole Milligan

Nicole Milligan

Details

Name: Nicole Milligan
Position: Research Assistant
Email: nicole.millian@zoo.ox.ac.uk

Autobiography

I graduated from the University of Toronto with a BSc in Zoology and Computer Science in 2004 and from the University of Oxford with an MSc in Biology in 2006. For my theses, I studied (i) learning and leadership in sticklebacks and (ii) the prevalence and diversity of avian malaria in magpies. Since then I have worked on various projects in Oxford and am now a research assistant at the EGI, investigating avian social networks.

Research Activities

I currently work on a project examining the causes and consequences of sociality in birds. My interests include daily foraging routines and how these are related to social network structure. I will be investigating variation in foraging routines, testing the predictions of optimality models for foraging routines, linking social networks and foraging routines, and conducting some experimental manipulations to find out what factors affect daily foraging routines. In order to investigate daily foraging routines and social networks, I will be using automated data loggers at feeder sites in Wytham and Bagley woods and fitting individual birds with PIT-tags.

Selected Recent Papers

Fitzpatrick, J. L., Desjardins, J. K., Milligan, N., Stiver, K. A., Montgomerie, R. & Balshine, S. 2008. Female-mediated causes and consequences of status change in a social fish. Proc R Soc Lond B 275:929-936.

Desjardins, J. K., Stiver, K. A., Fitzpatrick, J. L., Milligan, N., Van der Kraak, G. J. & Balshine, S. 2008. Sex and status in a cooperative breeding fish: behavior and androgens. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 62:785-794.

Fitzpatrick, J. L., Desjardins, J. K., Milligan, N., Montgomerie, R. & Balshine, S. 2007. Reproductive-tactic-specific variation in sperm swimming speeds in a shell-brooding cichlid. Biol Reprod 77:280-284.