Collaborative paper on impact behaviour of silk cocoons

I am co-author on a paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology on the impact behaviour of moth silk cocoons. The paper is part of then DPhil student Fujia Chen’s comprehensive study on the structure and material properties of a range of silk cocoons of...

Chapter in biomimetic book on self-organisation and self-healing

I have helped my collaborator Torben Lenau from the Technical University of Denmark with biological input to a chapter on the biomimetic potential of self-organisation and self-healing in nature. The chapter forms part of the book ‘Engineered Biomimicry, which...

New paper on behavioural flexibility in spiders

My last paper from my research at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama has now finally been published. The study has taken quite a while to get out. First because it took a while to find the right home for it (although I appreciate the useful comments...

Animal behaviour courses for the public in Oxford

This spring/summer I will be teaching two courses in animal behaviour aimed for the general public. Both courses are introductions to animal behaviour taught at a first year undergraduate level, which assume no prior knowledge of biology (a brief introduction to...

Non-sticky spiral paper out in JEB

The first proper paper from the ‘Structure and forces in orb webs’ project is out in the Journal of Experimental Biology. In this paper we measure web geometry and silk material properties, and use these, together with published data on pre-stress, to...

Collaborative paper on cues during sticky spiral construction

I have collaborated with Prof. William G. Eberhard from the Smithsonian Institute and the Universidad de Costa Rica on a study exploring the cues that orb spiders use during The study has just been published in: Eberhard, W. G. and Hesselberg, T. (2012). Cues that...