Natasha Gillies

Seabird behaviour and ecology

I'm a behavioural ecologist interested in how individual variation and environmental conditions interact to shape movement, decision-making, and parental strategies in wild animals. Currently, I'm a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Liverpool, where I study movement ecology in polar seabirds - including the wandering albatross, the black-browed albatross, and the black-legged kittiwake - using high-resolution biologging to explore the intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of movement, and their consequences at both individual and population levels.

My PhD research focused on the coordination of biparental care in long-lived seabirds, investigating the mechanisms that allow parents to negotiate care under challenging and uncertain conditions. This work sparked a broader interest in the evolution of parental care, which I’ll be exploring further from February 2026 through a research fellowship examining how ecological and evolutionary pressures shape cooperative strategies across species.

I’m particularly interested in questions that sit at the intersection of behaviour, ecology, and evolution, and in how individual-level decisions scale up to influence the evolution of life histories and social systems.

Research

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Avian Ecology Group University of Liverpool

April 2021 - present

Drivers and consequences of foraging behaviour

I am analyzing long-term datasets from British Antarctic Survey and Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, focusing on wandering and black-browed albatrosses. My research aims to understand how pair-level behaviors influence fitness and whether we can use foraging behavior to predict resource acquisition.

Movement decisions in albatrosses

Utilizing high-resolution GPS data alongside long-term behavioral assays, I have led projects on wandering albatrosses to explore (1) how personality traits affect foraging decisions at sea, and (2) the potential use of infrasound as a long-distance navigational cue.

ATLAS Wildlife Tracking

With support from a BBSRC Career Development Fellowship and NERC's Exploring the Frontiers grant, I have been collaborating with the ATLAS Wildlife Tracking team to establish the first ATLAS reverse-GPS tracking system in the Arctic. Ultimately, this system will allow for high-throughput, high resolution tracking of all major seabird species breeding in Svalbard.

DPhil Student, University of Oxford

September 2017 - March 2021

I worked in the OxNav research group for my BBSRC-funded PhD, where I investigated the mechanisms and consequences of coordinated parental care for two Procellariiform seabirds: the Manx shearwater and the black-browed albatross. I used precision biotelemetry devices in combination with fieldwork-based experiments and observations to investigate the decisions made by parents during breeding, and whether these are made cooperatively across the pair. My thesis is available to read online here.

Natasha Gillies

Research

April 2021 - present

Get in touch at natasha.gillies [at] liverpool.ac.uk