BSc Hons (Cape Town), MSc (Cape Town)

Cameron has been captivated by birds since he was a small child. His love for natural history was solidified growing up in the town of Hoedspruit, South Africa, a stone’s-throw from the famous Kruger National Park, Blyde River Canyon and Mariepskop forest.

Broadly, Cameron is interested in the ecology and evolution of birds. He is particularly interested in intra- and interspecific interactions including the signalling systems involved and their ecological and evolutionary consequences.

He completed his BSc at the University of Cape Town in Applied Biology, Ecology and Evolution in 2020. In 2021, he completed BSc Honours with the African Honeyguides team at the University of Cape Town (supervised by Prof. Claire Spottiswoode and Dr Jessica van der Wal), where he worked on the development of the guiding call of the Greater Honeyguide that functions in this species’ remarkable co-operative mutualism with humans. This work provided evidence that the guiding call develops from the calls honeyguide chicks use to beg for food from their host parents. His MSc dissertation, completed in 2024 (supervised by Prof. Claire Spottiswoode and Jess Lund), provided evidence that brood-parasitic honeyguide chicks mimic the begging calls of their hosts’ nestlings and looked at acoustic features honeyguide nestlings may use to deceive their host parents to provide them with large amounts of food.

Cameron is now pursuing his PhD under the supervision of Dr Gabriel Jamie studying ecological and evolutionary patterns within the genus Cisticola and the role of species interactions, acoustic signals and biogeographic history in explaining these patterns.

Thesis: Ecology, evolution and biogeography of the genus Cisticola

Publications:

Cram, D.L., van der Wal, J.E.M., Uomini, N.T., Cantor, M., Afan, A.I., Attwood, M.C., Amphaeris, J., Balasani, F., Blair, C.J., Bronstein, J.L., Buanachique, I.O., Cuthill, R.R.T., Das, J., Daura-Jorge, F.G., Deb, A., Dixit, T., Dlamini, G.S., Dounias, E., Gedi, I.I., Gruber, M., Hoffman, L.S., Holzlehner, T., Isack, H.A., Laltaika, A.E., Lloyd-Jones, D.J., Lund, J., Machado, A.M.S., Mahadevan, L., Moreno, I.B., Nwaogu, C.J., Pereira, V.L., Pierotti, R., Rucunua, S.A., dos Santos, W.F., Serpa, N., Smith, B.D., Sridhar, H., Tolkova, I., Tun, T., Valle-Pereira, J.V.S., Wood, B.M., Wrangham, R.W. and Spottiswoode, C.N. 2022 The ecology and evolution of human-wildlife cooperation. People and Nature, 4, 841–855.

van der Wal, J.E.M., Spottiswoode, C.N., Uomini, N.T., Cantor, M., Daura-Jorge, F.G., Afan, A.I., Attwood, M.C., Amphaeris, J., Balasani, F., Begg, C.M., Blair, C.J., Bronstein, J. L., Buanachique, I.O., Cuthill, R.R.T., Das, J., Deb, A., Dixit, T., Dlamini, G.S., Dounias, E., Gedi, I.I., Gruber, M., Hoffmann, L.S., Holzlehner, T., Isack, H.A., Laltaika, E.A., Lloyd-Jones, D.J., Lund, J., Machado, A.M.S., Mahadevan, L., Moreno, I.B., Nwaogu, C.J., Pereira, V.L., Pierotti, R., Rucunua, S.A., dos Santos, W.F., Serpa, N., Smith, B.D., Tolkova, I., Tun, T., Valle-Pereira, J.V.S., Wood, B.M., Wrangham, R.W. and Cram, D. L. 2022. Safeguarding human–wildlife cooperation. Conservation Letters. IF: 8.105