Gabrielle Davidson

My research focuses on corvids (crows, jackdaws, rooks) and their interactions with their partner, other group members, predators and humans. I am particularly interested in how corvids respond to other individual’s gaze direction (i.e. where others are looking) and how this affects decisions about nesting locations, predator escape and foraging opportunities.

I study captive corvids as part of the Comparative Cognition Lab (PI Professor Nicky Clayton) and wild corvids as part of the Cambridge Jackdaw Project in Madingley village (PI Dr. Alex Thornton). I am also interested in the evolution of morphological traits across the avian lineage as a whole, and am currently using phylogenetic comparative methods to investigate why some bird species have brightly coloured eyes.

I am also interested in how variations in phenotypes can be explained by variations in genotypes. In collaboration with clinicians at the Institute of Neurology, UCL, we matched genetic mutations with behavioural and physiological phenotypes associated with hereditary neuropathies such as Charcot-Marie Tooth Disease.