Postdocs
Dr Kahurangi Cronin
“I am a passionate ecologist/conservation biologist. Currently I am involved with research looking at the intersection of mātauranga māori, artificial intelligence and ecology to improve biodiversity in New Zealand”.
Dr Ella McCallum
“My research interests include animal cognition, behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology, with a particular focus on the causes and consequences of individual variation in cognition in toutouwai.”
PhD Students
Fraser Campbell, PhD candidate, 2025
Fraser is working on the behaviour and ecology of urban kākā, with a particular interest in sociality, foraging, and vocalisation.
Lorelei Switzer, PhD candidate, 2025
Lorelei is interested in the innovative problem-solving abilities of wild toutouwai and how these relate to their ecology, demographics, and reproductive success.
Nicolas Samelson, PhD candidate, 2025 (co-supervised with Andrew Lensen)
Nicolas is developing an AI tool to recognise individual kākā from real-world complex images, with particular focus on unsupervised learning, deep feature extraction, and computer vision.
Conny Habl, visiting PhD candidate from University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria (co-supervised with Megan Lambert), 2024
Conny is researching curiosity in kea and toutouwai. As she puts it “My main focus is to investigate the contexts in which curiosity related behaviours occur, as well as costs and limitations of neophilia. My main scientific interests are the causes of diverging cognitive skills in different bird species, particularly aspects of comparative and physical cognition.”
MSc Students
Jayden Alexander, MSc candidate, 2025
“I am researching toutouwai fate, movement, and behaviour in the halo of a mammalian predator-free ecosanctuary in order to inform conservation management strategies. I’m also interested in exploring how I could engage the local community in conservation outcomes throughout Wellington’s nature reserves.”
Andrew Brady Clark, MSc candidate, 2025
Andrew (they/them) is researching toutouwai learning and cognition. They have a particular interest in toutouwai identification of novel predators to inform conservation.
Ryan Jaggers, MSc candidate (co-supervised with Andrew Lensen), 2025
“I am currently researching how supplementary feeding impacts the development of sub-populations of kākā inside and outside a protected area. I will use AI to develop a novel re-identification technique to inform this research and future conservation efforts in human-wildlife conflict.”
Harry Donald, MSc candidate, 2024
“I am interested in the ecology and evolution of animal behaviour, with a particular interest in communication, cognition, and behavioural individuality. I am currently investigating whether the song of the toutouwai conveys information about an individual’s behavioural type.”
Emma Smith, MSc candidate, 2024
“I am researching behavioural pathways to mitigate anthropogenic harm to Wellington’s recovering kākā population as they expand from Zealandia and navigate the novel urban landscape. I’m exploring the use of conditioned taste aversion (CTA), which could have applications in ‘training’ juvenile kākā to avoid poison pest-control baits in the wild. I am also looking into physical bait station characteristics that may influence target and non-target species interactions with poison baits across the city. By understanding the behaviour of these curious birds I hope we can find increasingly effective and targeted ways to protect them as they make their recovery.”
Abigail Clennell, MSc candidate in Computer Science (co-supervised with Andrew Lensen), 2025
Lab Alumni:
Ella McCallum, PhD, 2021 – 2025
Ella investigated individual differences in inhibitory control in wild toutouwai.
Tirth Vaishnav, PhD, 2021 – 2025
As part of his thesis, Tirth researched the dietary preferences and nocturnal behaviour of kākā (co-supervised by KC Burns).
Max Richardson, MSc, 2023 – 2025
Max examined the phenology of toutouwai pairing and nesting, as well as the drivers of nesting success and divorce in our study population (co-supervised by Dr Andrew Rees).
Matthew Ireland, MSc, 2023 – 2024
Matthew used camera trap data collected at kea burrows to identify kea nest predators. He also tested prototype protection devices for kea burrow entrances. This work was supported by the Kea Conservation Trust.
Liam McAuliffe, PhD, 2020 – 2024
Liam used 10 endemic bird species (including kākā and toutouwai) to investigate how foraging versatility and bone morphometrics interact with each other to influence tolerance to novel landscapes, and how species’ encounter rates vary response to changing land use. Liam was co-supervised by Prof. Nicky Nelson and Prof. Danielle Shanahan.
Olivia Hartshorne, MSc, 2021 – 2022
Liv examined sources of song complexity and seasonal song dynamics in male toutouwai. This research was co-supervised by Prof. Stephen Marsland.
Isaac Armstrong, MSc, 2020-2022
Isaac investigated how human presence and landscape use influence the behaviour and distribution of kākā.
Finley Johnson (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga & Ngāti Rongomaiwahine), Research Assistant, 2020 – 2021
Fin examined the Mātauranga for kākā, with a focus on how understanding the nature of bio-cultural relationships between Māori and kākā.
Juniper Sprengers-Sanson (Waikato Tainui), Research Assistant, 2019 – 2020
Juniper researched the Mātauranga for kākā, with a focus understanding the changing dynamics in kākā plant interactions through time.
Tas Vámos, PhD candidate, 2019-2023
Tas investigated toutouwai spatial memory and examined how it influences caching behaviour and fitness.
Regan MacKinlay, PhD, 2018-2022
Regan’s research investigated individual variation in toutouwai nesting and foraging behaviors. He considered how cognitive theory could be harnessed to promote adaptive, and deter maladaptive behavioral variation.
Daisy Abraham, BSc Hons, 2021
Daisy’s dissertation, ‘The effect of visitors on the behaviour of Nestor parrots’, examined how visitor presence at Wellington Zoo and Zealandia impacts the behaviour of kea and kākā (and it turns out they are mostly pretty ambivalent towards people!)
Daniel Donoghue, PhD, 2017 – 2021
Daniel examined whether and how behavioural innovations can be socially transmitted in kea and kākā populations.
Nalini Singh, BSc Hons, 2019 – 2020
Nalini’s dissertation, ‘Food for thought: use and costs of supplementary feeding in a large parrot, the North Island kaka‘, investigated how supplementary feeding impacts the behaviour of Zealandia’s kākā.
Benjamin Rothenbühler, MSc, 2019 – 2020
Ben carried out toutouwai personality and learning research towards his Masters at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.
Caroline Warren, Research Intern, 2017
After completing an undergraduate degree back home in the States, Caroline joined our research group as an intern. From September until December 2017 she monitored the survival and reproduction of the robin study population.
Leonie Weltgen (MSc), 2016 – 2017
Leonie Weltgen completed her thesis, ‘Social learning in a wild food caching species, the North Island robin (Petroica longipes)’ , as part of her Masters degree at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Chris Woolley (Summer Scholar), 2016 – 2017
Chris was awarded a Summer Scholarship to study parent-offspring social learning dynamics. During the project he developed a new paradigm for studying social learning in robins.
Latu Clark (MSc), 2015 – 2016
Here’s how Latu described her research: “I am studying parent-offspring interactions in the North Island robin during the 2015/2016 breeding season. I hope to better understand the factors affecting parental care decisions in the lead up to brood division (which occurs when chicks leave the nest). Additionally, as North Island robins are one of only a few Southern Hemisphere species which cache food, a second aim of my thesis is to examine the ontogeny of food-caching in North Island robins and evaluate the role of parents in this developmental process.”
Regan MacKinlay (BSc, MConBio), 2015 – 2016
In Regan’s final BSc year in SBS at VUW he completed a research project examining the relationship between song complexity, caching and inhibitory control in robins. In 2016, Regan carried out another independent research project as part of his Masters in Conservation Biology. For this project he investigated the relationship between territory size, foraging efficiency and reproductive success in robins.
Julia Loepelt (PhD), 2013 – 2016
Julia examined the factors influencing novel problem-solving in wild kākā at Zealandia.
Marie Courteville (MSc), 2015
Marie completed her thesis, ‘Natal dispersal and dispersal behaviour of North Island robins in a mainland island sanctuary‘, as part of her Masters at a Gembloux Agro Bio-Tech University in Belgium.
