OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
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.
