A central question in the field of social monogamy is: What makes a good partnership ? 

Most studies measure pair bonds through what happens at the nest but this captures only a fraction of a pair's shared life. This project takes a broader view, asking how closely mated partners actually associate across multiple aspects of their daily activities. 

Using automated radio-tracking arrays in the Australian outback, we followed pairs of chirruping wedgebills (Psophodes cristatus) over several months. This allowed us to quantify continuous spatial pair cohesion. Paired birds shared nearly identical home ranges, stayed significantly closer together than chance would predict, and one bird followed the other's movements in roughly half of all cases. 

Chirruping wedgebills are also a very vocal species (hence the name), and perform duets. Using experimental setups in the wild, we measure whether the precision of coordinated duet singing could serve as an additional signal of pair bond quality. 

Together, these studies highlight that measuring the closeness of a pair bond requires going beyond the nest, capturing the full spatiotemporal fabric of a partnership across contexts and seasons.

This work on chirruping wedgebills was started during my PhD. For more information, you can find my thesis here.