Angela Moreras

MSc (Bielefeld University)

John Day Building 1.02

Since she was a little girl, Angela had a dream: to be a biologist. When she was in elementary school, she was fascinated by animals and their interaction, and captivated by their relationship with their environment. This interest led her to read books that could help her comprehend the delicate balance of life, even though she could not completely understand them at the time. When she finished high school, she decided that she wanted to become a researcher and applied for the undergraduate biology program at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. During her undergraduate program, Angela learnt everything she could about birds. For her bachelor thesis, she decided that she wanted to know more about song learning and tested whether the Shiny Cowbird (Molothrus bonariensis), being a brood parasite, could learn songs. After graduating she worked as a field assistant in Cali-Colombia gaining field experience in nest searching, as well as mist-netting, banding and collecting blood samples from different bird species.

After working as a researcher in Colombia, Angela completed a masters programme in Germany "Behaviour: From Neural Mechanism to Evolution" at Bielefeld University. This masters programme has an emphasis on animal behaviour and evolution. For her thesis, she kept working with Colombian birds to try to better understand parental behaviour against predation. More specifically, she wanted to know if there are differential antipredator responses depending on the type of predator.

In October 2019, Angela joined the FitzPatrick Institute as a PhD student under the primary supervision of Dr Robert Thomson. Thesis title: Frontline strategies in the arms-race between hosts and their brood parasites: the case of the Common Redstart and the Common Cuckoo.