Joel Radue

BSc (Hons), UCT

For as long as Joel can remember, he has been fascinated by birds and nature in general. As a keen birder, he has been fortunate to explore much of his home country of South Africa while looking for birds. The questions raised by experiences in the field and his love for evolutionary biology pushed him to study ornithology. He is particularly interested in the origins of phenotypic plasticity, and the role that plasticity can play in adaptive capacity in the face of climate change.

Joel completed his BSc in Biology and Applied Statistics at the University of Cape Town in 2022. In 2023, he completed his BSc Honours with the African Cuckoos team at the University of Cape Town, investigating the relationships between temperature, egg phenotypes and parental behaviour in ground-nesting birds in Zambia (supervised by Prof. Claire Spottiswoode, Dr Nicholas Horrocks and Dr Shannon Conradie). This has led him to be interested in the thermal limits of ground-nesting birds and their eggs.

Now doing his MSc, he is focusing on the evolution of fire-dependent life histories in birds, specifically looking at the ecology of Bronze-winged Coursers and their movements in relation to the burnt areas in which they breed. He is supervised by Prof. Claire Spottiswoode, Dr. Eunbi Kwon and Prof. Sally Archibald.