Mic Vrettos

Born and brought up in Cape Town, with frequent family holiday trips to South African and Zimbabwean national parks, Mic was fascinated by the natural world and was a clear future zoologist from a young age. Despite this, Mic initially completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Cape Town in 2014, with no intention at the time to study science. After briefly returning to school to complete a matric Physical Science qualification via distance learning, they completed their BSc in Ecology & Evolution and Genetics at the University of Cape Town in 2018, followed by a BSc Honours in 2019, where they undertook a project supervised by A/Prof. Arjun Amar investigating the popular hypothesis that malar stripes in Peregrine Falcons function to reduce the impact of solar glare on vision while hunting. This project found a positive association between solar radiation and malar stripe size and prominence in Peregrine Falcons, thus providing the first empirical support for this hypothesis. Mic’s MSc research, completed under the supervision of A/Prof. Arjun Amar and Dr Chevonne Reynolds (University of the Witwatersrand) in 2022, extended this analysis to all extant falcon species and corroborated the earlier support for the hypothesis in Peregrine Falcons. However, it did not find similar patterns in any other species or across falcons as a group, appearing to disconfirm this hypothesis as an explanation for the evolution of falcon malar stripes. 

After briefly turning to a role in science education and outreach, working as a Youth Education Programme Coordinator for the Cape Bird Club, Mic then took a research position at the Konrad Lorenz Research Centre (KLF) in Austria, joining the START-funded project ‘Acceleration for Food’ under the supervision of A/Prof. Petra Sumasgutner and investigating the foraging patterns of Common Ravens at zoo animal enclosures and the impact of predation risk on foraging trade-offs. 

Mic is now pursuing their PhD under the supervision of A/Prof. Arjun Amar and A/Prof. Susan Cunningham, studying the impact of climate change on African raptors and its behavioural, phenological, and life-history consequences.

Mic is chiefly interested in the ecology and evolution of raptors and avian scavengers, and in the use of broad-scale quantitative data and statistical tools – including citizen science and movement ecology techniques such as GPS tracking – to address these questions. They are particularly interested in the threats posed to raptors and scavengers by an increasingly changing world, and the ecological–evolutionary consequences of and adaptations to anthropogenic change in raptor populations in Africa and beyond.

Thesis: Behavioural and life-history responses to climate change in African raptors

Publications:

Vrettos, M., Reynolds, C. and Amar, A. 2025. No support for solar radiation as a major evolutionary driver of malar stripes in falcons. Journal of Avian Biology 2025: e03322. https://doi.org/10.1111/jav.03322

Vrettos, M., Reynolds, C., Amar, A. 2021. Malar stripe size and prominence in peregrine falcons vary positively with solar radiation: support for the solar glare hypothesis. Biology Letters 17. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0116