Research Associate

Dr Rita Covas PhD (Cape Town) Email: rita.covas@mail.icav.up.pt

Rita completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Lisbon which included a graduation dissertation on the biogeography of Mediterranean birds at the CNRS in Montpellier, France, with Jacques Blondel. After that she worked on the seabird community of Sao Tome and Principe in the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa with Luis Monteiro and Martim Melo.

In 1998 Rita moved to Cape Town to start a PhD on cooperative breeding in sociable weavers at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute with Morné du Plessis. She then moved to the University of Edinburgh and is currently a Marie Curie fellow at the CEFE-CNRS, Montpellier, France.

The central themes of Rita's research are the evolution of kin sociality and life-histories in birds and the relationship between the two. She has been working on cooperative breeding and helping behaviour on the sociable weaver Philetairus socius, since 1998. This has involved collaboration with several people and, in particular, Claire Doutrelant (CEFE-CNRS, France). She is currently also collaborating with Michael Griesser (Uppsala University, Sweden) in a study of the evolution of family group living across species.

Rita's other major research topic is trying to understand broad patterns of variation in life-history and behaviour, particularly evolution on islands and latitudinal patterns. She has an ongoing field
study in the gulf of Guinea islands, West Africa, where she studied factors related to life-history variation and adaptations to the island environment. More specifically, she is investigating the relationship between blood parasite levels, immunity and the life-history characteristics, secondary sexual traits and mating systems of bird species in this region. This research is being done in collaboration with Martim Melo (CEFE-CNRS, France), Jon Beadell and Robert Fleischer (Smithsonian Institute, USA) and Staffan Andersson (Goteborg University, Sweden).

Rita is also using museum collections and literature-based data to investigate whether there are global patterns of life history trait adaptation on islands, particularly in morphology and sexual ornamentation. This is also a collaborative study together with with Claire Doutrelant, Arnaud Gregoire and Pierre-Andr Crochet (CEFE-CNRS, France).

Research programmes

Recent peer-reviewed publications

2011

Covas, R., Deville, A.S., Doutrelant, C., Spottiswoode, C.N. & Gregoire, A. 2011. The effect of helpers on the postfledging period in a cooperatively breeding bird, the sociable weaver. Animal Behaviour 81:121-126. IF 2.89

2009

Beadell, J.S., Covas, R., Melo, M., Ishtiaq, F., Perkins, S.L., Graves, G.R., Fleischer, R.C. 2009. Host associations and evolutionary relationships of avian blood parasites from West Africa. International Journal of Parasitology: 39: 257-266.