Sociable Weaver Project

Welcome to the Sociable Weaver Research project

We are an international team of researchers and students from Europe and South Africa working on the aptly named Sociable Weaver, a highly social bird endemic to the Kalahari region of southern Africa. Our long-term research is based at Benfontein Nature Reserve near Kimberley, South Africa. We use this distinctive species as a model to study the evolution of cooperation and life-history strategies. We also use our long-term data to understand how social and environmental factors influence long-term population dynamics. Our team is based jointly at the CIBIO-InBio (University of Porto, Portugal), the CEFE-CNRS (University of Montpellier, France) and the Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology (University of Cape Town, South Africa), and we collaborate with researchers in other institutions and countries.

Our work is funded by the European Research Council (ERC), the French Research Agency (ANR), the Fitzpatrick Institute and the OSU OREME (CNRS).