Dr Gabriel Jamie

BA(Hons) (Cambridge), PhD (Cambridge)

Activities and research interests

Dr Gabriel Jamie is an evolutionary biologist and ecologist whose research combines fieldwork, genomic and theoretical approaches to answer questions in speciation, systematics, mimicry and polymorphism, with a special focus on the origins of avian biodiversity across Africa.

His interest in science began through watching birds, first as a child in Cape Town and then the United Kingdom. As a teenager he worked on projects monitoring bird migration in the Danube Delta of Romania and on Antikythira in Greece. While doing an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, Gabriel spent summers as a research assistant studying avian community ecology in Peru with scientists from Oxford University and the Wildlife Conservation Society. After graduating, Gabriel did a PhD with Professor Claire Spottiswoode at University of Cambridge conducting fieldwork in Zambia on mimicry and speciation in the brood-parasitic Vidua finches (indigobirds and whydahs), funded by The Leverhulme Trust. This work began a long-term connection with Zambia, a country in which he has been fortunate to spend much time and travel extensively since 2013.

Upon finishing his PhD, Gabriel took up a BBSRC-funded post-doctoral research associate position at the University of Cambridge where his work focussed on the brood-parasitic Cuckoo Finch (Anomalospiza imberbis) and its Tawny-flanked Prinia (Prinia subflava) hosts. Prinias have evolved incredibly diverse eggs which vary dramatically in colour and pattern between individuals. In collaboration with Professor Michael Sorenson of Boston University and Professor Claire Spottiswoode, Gabriel investigated the genetic basis of this diversity and the consequences of this genetic architecture for the co-evolutionary trajectories in the ongoing arms race between prinias and their Cuckoo Finch parasites.  In 2021, Gabriel was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship allowing him to build on his previous and extend his investigations into the origins and evolution of polymorphisms beyond single species in order to understand their dynamics across species radiations. To explore these concepts, Gabriel has used the avian family Cisticolidae, and in particular the genus Cisticola, as a model system to investigate the evolution of polymorphisms across a species-rich African radiation.

In 2024, Gabriel joined the FitzPatrick Institute as a Lecturer and Deputy Co-director of the Max Planck-University of Cape Town Centre for Behaviour and Co-evolution. Here he continues his research into the origins and maintenance of Africa’s avian biodiversity and, from 2025, will take up the convenorship position of the institute’s flagship Conservation Biology Masters course.

Gabriel is a passionate field biologist and has been involved in ornithological expeditions around the world to study poorly-known species and understudied habitats. This has led him to do fieldwork across Africa including Zambia, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana, Namibia, South Africa and Madagascar.

For a list of publications please see Google Scholar and for Gabriel’s bird observation, sound recordings and photographic collections see eBird.