This project focuses on a unique mutualism: the foraging partnership between Greater Honeyguides Indicator indicator and human honey-hunters whom they guide to bees’ nests. Honeyguides know where bees’ nests are located and like to eat beeswax; humans know how to subdue the bees using fire, and open nests using axes. By working together, the two species can overcome the bees’ defences, with benefits to both. Remarkably, this relationship has evolved through natural selection, and provides a wonderful opportunity to study the ecology and evolution of mutualisms in nature, because human and honeyguide populations vary strikingly in how they interact, and we can readily manipulate these interactions.

Claire Spottiswoode and her team at the Fitz and the University of Cambridge have been studying human-honeyguide interactions in the Niassa National Reserve of northern Mozambique since 2013, collaborating with the honey-hunting community of Mbamba village, and receiving crucial support from the Mariri Environmental Centre led by Dr Colleen Begg, Keith Begg and Agostinho Jorge of the Niassa Carnivore Project. One key focus has been investigating reciprocal communication between the two parties: not only do honeyguides signal to humans, but in many different cultures, humans signal back to honeyguides, giving special calls to attract honeyguides and maintain their attention while following them. The Yao honey-hunters of northern Mozambique give a loud trill followed by a grunt. A 2016 experiment showed that honeyguides were twice as likely to initiate a cooperative interaction with humans who made this sound compared to humans giving control sounds, and three times as likely to lead such humans to honey.

Supported by a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council and now the Max Planck-UCT Centre for Behaviour and Coevolution (as well as other grants, including the Cultural Evolution Society Transformation Fund), we now ask whether learning is involved in maintaining a geographical mosaic of honeyguide adaptation to local human cultures; how such reciprocal communication between humans and honeyguides mediates their interactions; what the effects of cultural co-extinctions may be on each partner and their ecosystems; and ultimately, how quickly such cultures can be re-ignited following their loss. In so doing we hope to test whether reciprocal learning can give rise to matching cultural traits between interacting species. Understanding the role of such phenotypic plasticity is crucial to explain how and why the outcome of species interactions varies in space and time, and to predict how they will respond to a rapidly changing world.

Our project, known as ‘Projecto Sego’ (‘sego’ is Greater Honeyguide in the Yao language), has the support of the community and traditional chiefs of the Mbamba and Nkuti villages. We cooperate closely with the local community to collect data and assist with our field sampling, experiments and documentation of Indigenous knowledge. We also regularly carry out honeyguide fieldwork in several parts of Tanzania, again in collaboration with local honey-hunting communities, and at field sites in Zambia and South Africa. Since 2022, we have been documenting honey-hunting cultures in over ten countries as part of a Pan-African collaborative effort led by post-doctoral fellow Jessica van der Wal, primarily funded by a Cultural Evolution Society Transformation Grant.

Activities in 2024

  • Lailat Guta started her MSc on the ecosystem role of honey-hunting with honeyguides, especially in relation to bees and pollination. She made a successful field trip to the Niassa Special Reserve in Mozambique during the rainy season, carrying out pollination experiments on crops to test whether honey-hunting has any effect on pollination ecosystem services. Lailat is supervised by Claire Spottiswoode, Colleen Seymour and Jessica van der Wal.
  • After the rains, Lailat Guta, Jess Lund and Claire Spottiswoode carried out a successful further field trip to Niassa in May, capturing and tracking our long-term study population of honeyguides together with our honey-hunter colleagues Carvalho Issa Nanguar, Seliano Rucunua and Fatima Balasani. At the Niassa Special Reserve in Mozambique, a team of five honey-hunters continued to collect bee samples from the bee colonies they naturally harvest, resulting in a bee genetic dataset which allows us to tackle questions on the ecology of wild honeybees and how this may be affected by honeyguide-human mutualism.
  • Eliupendo Alaitetei Laltaika continued his PhD fieldwork in Tanzania.
  • Daniella Mhangwana began her MSc research project investigating why and how several other bird species besides honeyguides also eat wax. Daniella is supervised by Claire Spottiswoode, Celiwe Ngcamphalala and Susan Miller.
  • Our citizen science project, Honeyguiding.me, continues to receive records of Greater Honeyguides, which will enable us to map the extent of changes in guiding behaviour and help to shed light on how honeyguides acquire their ability to engage with humans (see website: AfricanHoneyguides.com).
  • Jessica van der Wal came to the end of her five years as a postdoc at UCT and continues as a Research Fellow at both the Fitz and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, funded by the newly established Max Planck-UCT Centre for Behaviour and Coevolution.
  • Amana Kilawi, a member of the African Honey-Hunting Research Network and a former CB student, spearheaded a successful outreach initiative at a school in northern Tanzania. She organised the creation of a mural by a local artist, depicting a honey-hunting scene featuring a honeyguide bird, highlighting a declining tradition in this region. Collaborator Colleen Begg helped a similar outreach initiative at Mariri Environmental Centre in Niassa, where a mural also depicting a honey-hunting scene was made by a local artist.
  • The Honey-hunter Researchers Network (coordinated by Jessica van der Wal) met in Cape Town in February, including Wiro-Bless Kamboe, Rochelle Mphetlhe, George M’manga, Sanele Nhlabatsi, Daniella Mhangwana, Celiwe Ngcamphalala, Claire Spottiswoode and Jessica van der Wal. We discussed research findings, shared skills, and planned manuscripts.
  • We concluded our European Research Council Consolidator Grant project, which supported the honeyguide team’s research from 2017 to 2024. Since mid-2024, the project is supported by the new Max Planck-UCT Centre for Behaviour and Coevolution.

Highlights

  • Claire Spottiswoode, Lailat Guta, David Lloyd-Jones and Sally Archibald (Witwatersrand University) held a productive meeting with the Niassa Special Reserve management to share our data on the ecological role of honey-hunting with honeyguides, such that it could contribute to the reserve’s management plan. Sally and Claire also reported back on the honeyguide team’s research specifically on the role of honey-hunting in fire ecology (studied by Rion Cuthill during his MPhil) at a Niassa fire management workshop in Maputo.
  • David Lloyd-Jones submitted his PhD, entitled “Cooperation, ecology and behaviour in the honeyguide-human mutualism”.
  • Rion Cuthill graduated with his MPhil from the University of Cambridge. His thesis was entitled "The ecological impacts of honey-hunting on fire regimes in the Niassa Special Reserve, Mozambique", from work together with Claire Spottiswoode, Sally Archibald, David Lloyd-Jones and a large team of honey-hunter collaborators in Mozambique.
  • Wiro-Bless Kamboe graduated with his CB MSc, His thesis was entitled “Partners, companions, or enemies: how and why people differ in their relationship with honeyguides in northern Ghana”, supervised by Jessica van der Wal, Claire Spottiswoode, and Fitz alumnus Timothy Khan Aikins. His fieldwork was supported by the Cultural Evolution Society Transformation grant.
  • Claire Spottiswoode shared overviews of the research team’s findings in a plenary talk at the International Society for Behavioural Ecology (ISBE) conference in Melbourne, Australia, and seminars at the University of Saint-Etienne in France, Harvard University in the USA, Durham University in the UK, the Nyika-Vwaza Trust in the UK, and at UCT.
  • Daniella Mhangwana and Sanele Nhlabatsi gave talks on their honeyguide research at the International Society for Behavioural Ecology conference in Melbourne, Australia.
  • Jessica van der Wal and Wiro-Bless Kamboe gave a talk and poster at the Cultural Evolution Society conference in Durham, UK, on the work of the Honey-hunting Research Network which is funded by the Cultural Evolution Society Transformation Fund. Jessica also gave a seminar at the University of Stirling in Scotland, and a lecture at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
  • Several members of the honeyguide research team presented research talks at the opening workshop of the Max Planck-UCT Centre for Behaviour and Coevolution in Seewiesen, Germany, in June: Lailat Guta, Eliupendo Laltaika, David Lloyd-Jones, Jess Lund, Daniella Mhangwana, Susan Miller and Jessica van der Wal, as well as our collaborators Brian Wood from UCLA and Celiwe Ngcamphalala from UCT.
  • A paper led by Jessica van der Wal, Dominic Cram and Claire Spottiswoode investigating the possible cooperation between honey badgers and greater honeyguides, won the 2023 Journal of Zoology ‘Paper of the Year’ award. The journal’s editors commended its innovative approach, blending literature, observations, and interviews, as well as its diverse authorship and valuable contributions to both science and communities. Among the co-authors were several past and present members of the Fitz and UCT: Gabriel Jamie, Wiro-Bless Kamboe, Amana Kilawi, Eliupendo Laltaika, David Lloyd-Jones and Celiwe Ngcamphalala.
  • A 2022 paper led by a Jessica van der Wal and a similar team, “Safeguarding human-wildlife cooperation”, was highlighted by Wiley as one of their most influential research publications from South African authors, with over 9,000 downloads since its publication in Conservation Letters.
  • The honeyguide team’s recent work on honeyguide-human communication was covered in National Geographic.
  • In a side project while carrying out honeyguide fieldwork in Mozambique, David-Lloyd Jones, in collaboration with Tomas Buruwate of Mariri Environmental Centre, Mozambique, published a landmark paper, comprehensively describing the Niassa Special Reserve’s reptiles and amphibians, in the Journal of East African Natural History.

Honey-hunting research network

  • Jessica van der Wal continued coordinating efforts by the Honey-hunting Research Network, supported by a grant from the Cultural Evolution Society Transformation Fund. Entitled ‘Together’, the Network is documenting Africa’s remaining diversity of endangered honey-hunting cultures with honeyguide birds.
  • All network researchers (Anap Afan, George Malembo, Sanele Nhlabatsi, Wiro-Bless Kamboe, Faroukou Wabi, David Garakva, Rochelle Mphetlhe, Ali Langa and Samson Zelleke) have now finalised their data collection and entry, and the data are currently being merged.
  • Wiro-Bless Kamboe and Sanele Nhlabatsi and co-authors have submitted manuscripts from their findings for publication.

Impact of the project

This project closely involves rural communities and simultaneously relies on and showcases their knowledge and expertise. Data from the project on the ecological role of honey-hunting are currently contributing to conservation planning in the Niassa Special Reserve, Mozambique. More broadly, we hope to further our understanding of how mutualisms evolve, and specifically how learnt traits mediating mutualisms may coevolve. Understanding the evolution of mutualisms sheds light on the mechanisms that can maintain cooperation among unrelated individuals. It is also important for effective conservation because mutualisms can have a wide reach in ecological communities. The honeyguide-human mutualism has disappeared from large parts of Africa, as the continent develops. It would be a tragedy if it vanished altogether before we fully understood this part of our own evolutionary history.

Key co-supporters
European Research Council; Cultural Evolution Society; National Geographic Society; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; DSI-NRF CoE grant; British Ecological Society; Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour; American Ornithological Society.

Research team 2024
Team leaders and collaborators:
Prof. Claire Spottiswoode (FIAO, UCT/U. Cambridge)
Dr Jessica van der Wal (FIAO, UCT)
Dr Susan Miller (FIAO, UCT)
Farisayi Dakwa (FIAO, UCT)
Dr Dominic Cram (U. Cambridge)
Assoc. Prof. Brian Wood (U. California, Los Angeles)
Prof. Sally Archibald (Wits University)
Prof. Timm Hoffman (Biological Sciences, UCT)
Dr Colleen Begg (Niassa Carnivore Project)
Keith Begg (Niassa Carnivore Project)
Celestino Dauda (Niassa Carnivore Project)
Dr Yusuf Abdullahi Ahmed (U. Pretoria)
Prof. Robin Crewe (U. Pretoria)
Prof. Christian Pirk (U. Pretoria)
Prof. Robert Fleischer (Smithsonian Institution)
Dr Anne Kandler (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany)
Dr Laurel Fogarty (Max Planck Institute for Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany)
Dr Mazi Sanda (U. Ngaoundéré, Cameroon)
Dr Celiwe Ngcamphalala (Biological Sciences, UCT)
Dr Timothy Aikins Khan (University for Development Studies, Ghana)
Dr Rodrigue Idohou (Université Nationale d'Agriculture,Benin)
Agostinho Jorge (Niassa Carnivore Project)

Honey-hunting research network 2024:
Anap Afan (APLORI, Nigeria); George Malembo (Mzuzu University, Malawi); Sanele Nhlabatsi (Eswatini); Wiro-Bless Kamboe (UCT); Faroukou Wabi (Benin); David Garakva (U. Ngaoundéré, Cameroon); Rochelle Mphetlhe (UCT); Ali Langa (Chad); Samson Zelleke (Ethiopia).

Students:
Eliupendo Alaitetei Laltaika (PhD, UCT); David Lloyd-Jones (PhD, UCT); Jess Lund (PhD, U. Cambridge); Rion Cuthill (MPhil, U. Cambridge); Wiro-Bless Kamboe (CB MSc, UCT); Daniella Mhangwana (MSc, UCT); Lailat Guta (MSc, UCT)

Project Sego data collection team:
Fatima Balasani, Carvalho Issa Nanguar, Kambunga Jaime, Seliano Alberto Rucunua and Rui Francisco Ndala, with data collection by many others.