Professor Claire Spottiswoode
College positions: Senior Research Fellow
University position: Research Fellow
Subject: Biological Sciences
Professor Claire Spottiswoode is a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene.
Professor Spottiswoode is an evolutionary ecologist and naturalist, recognised for her work on African birds and the dynamics of species interactions. She holds the Pola Pasvolsky Chair in Conservation Biology at the University of Cape Town’s FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.
She studied zoology and botany at the University of Cape Town, graduating in 2001 with a Bachelor of Science and Honours degrees, before moving to the University of Cambridge to complete her PhD. Her doctoral thesis focused on behavioural ecology and life-history strategies in African birds.
She took up her current chair at the University of Cape Town in 2016 but has continued her collaborative work with researchers at Cambridge. Her research and academic contributions have earned wide recognition. In 2017, she received the Bicentenary Medal from the Linnean Society of London, and in 2025, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
KEY PUBLICATIONS
Extrapair paternity, migration, and breeding synchrony in birds, by Spottiswoode, C., 2004. Behavioral Ecology, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 41–57.
Southern African Birdfinder: Where to find 1400 bird species in southern Africa and Madagascar, by Cohen, Callan; Spottiswoode, Claire; Rossouw, Jonathan, 2006. Johannesburg: Penguin Random House South Africa. ISBN 9781868727254.
Quantitative criteria for species delimitation, by Tobias, Joseph A.; Seddon, Nathalie; Spottiswoode, Claire N.; Pilgrim, John D.; Fishpool, Lincoln D. C.; Collar, Nigel J., 2010. Ibis, vol. 152, no. 4, pp. 724–746.
Visual modeling shows that avian host parents use multiple visual cues in rejecting parasitic eggs, by Spottiswoode, Claire N.; Stevens, Martin, 2010. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 107, no. 19, pp. 8672–8676.
How to evade a coevolving brood parasite: egg discrimination versus egg variability as host defences, by Spottiswoode, Claire N.; Stevens, Martin, 2011. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 278, no. 1724, pp. 3566–3573.
Host-Parasite Arms Races and Rapid Changes in Bird Egg Appearance, by Spottiswoode, Claire N.; Stevens, Martin, 2012. The American Naturalist, vol. 179, no. 5, pp. 633–648.
Reciprocal signaling in honeyguide-human mutualism, by Spottiswoode, Claire N.; Begg, Keith S.; Begg, Colleen M., 2016. Science, vol. 353, no. 6297, pp. 387–389.