Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. The two-week OxTalks freeze period starts on Monday 2nd March. During this time, there will be no facility to publish or edit events. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period. Once Oxford Events launches, you will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
Breeding in large, cooperative groups allows the costs of reproduction to be shared amongst individuals. This has enabled organisms to live in places that would otherwise be uninhabitable. However, a ubiquitous feature of animal societies is that breeding groups vary markedly in their size and composition. Why, given the benefits of cooperation, do large groups only sometimes emerge? Here I present a series of experiments on the worlds largest bird, the ostrich, where the answer to this question involves a tale of sex, cheating and cooperation in the struggle to reproduce in some of the hottest places on earth.
