African Honeyguides

Research on a remarkable
human-animal relationship

Prof. Claire Spottiswoode

Claire Spottiswoode

Biography

­I am an evolutionary ecologist and naturalist with a particular interest in the ecology, evolution and conservation of species interactions. I run two long-term field projects on African birds, in close collaboration with communities in Zambia and Mozambique. In southern Zambia (since 2006), we study coevolution between brood-parasitic birds (such as cuckoos, honeyguides and parasitic finches) and the hosts that they exploit to raise their young. In northern Mozambique (since 2013), we focus on the topic of this website: the mutually beneficial interactions between honeyguides and the human honey-hunters with whom they cooperate to gain access to bees’ nests.

Aside from parasitism and mutualism, I’m widely interested in ecology, evolution, ornithology and conservation, and have also worked on avian sociality, life-history evolution, pollination, sexual selection, nest camouflage, migration, and the conservation ecology of threatened species in the Horn of Africa and northern Mozambique. After my PhD (2005) I worked for many years in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, before returning home to South Africa, where I am currently Pola Pasvolsky Chair in Conservation Biology at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, and Co-Director of the Max Planck–UCT Centre for Behaviour and Coevolution. Most of my work is inspired by natural history, and I strongly believe in the value of field experiments.

Research Focus

Our honeyguide research project began in 2013, thanks to a chance meeting in the northern Mozambican bush with Keith Begg of the Niassa Carnivore Project. Keith showed me that here, in the Niassa Special Reserve, the remarkable relationship between honeyguides and humans still thrives. Our initial research focus was on communication, showing experimentally that not only do humans understand the signals that honeyguides use to show them bees’ nests, but honeyguides, too, understand the specialised signals that honey-hunters give to advertise to honeyguides that they are seeking their help. This inspired the programme of work we carry out as a team, with the wonderful support of the European Research Council from 2017 to 2024, and in close collaboration with honey-hunting communities and interdisciplinary colleagues from several fields.

For more information on our research on the other side of honeyguides’ lives, as cuckoo-like brood parasites of other birds, please visit our sister project in Zambia at www.africancuckoos.com.

 

Selected recent publications:

(Please see Google Scholar for a full publication list)

 

News

Tragic attacks in the Niassa Special Reserve, Mozambique

On 29 April 2025, armed insurgents attacked the Mariri Environmental Centre in Mozambique’s Niassa Special Reserve, resulting in the tragic loss of two anti-poaching scouts, Domingos Daude and Fernando Paolo Wirsone (please see statement from the Niassa Carnivore Project). This followed a prior tragic attack at Kambako Safari camp on 19 April. Mariri and the nearby village of Mbamba are at the heart of our work on human-honeyguide cooperation, made possible by the knowledge and partnership of the Mbamba honey-hunting community. We grieve alongside the people of Mariri, Mbamba, and the wider Niassa community, and stand in solidarity with the enduring spirit of conservation and unity.

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New paper on honeyguides guiding to snakes (and a mammal) rather than to bees

In a new study from the Honeyguide Research Project, we are excited to present evidence that honeyguides occasionally guide humans to non-bee animals. Our research – which builds on centuries of reports by a wide variety of human cultures across Africa – shows how the behaviour of honeyguides when guiding humans to wild bees’ nests, is spatially and acoustically similar to when honeyguides guide humans to other kinds of animal. In Niassa Special Reserve, where this research was conducted, we find this to be a rare behaviour (occurring on around 1% of honey-hunting interactions). We suggest that the most likely explanation for such behaviour is not as punishment for not previously rewarding the birds with beeswax, nor as a form of altruistic warning behaviour, but rather, due to cognitive mistakes in the birds’ spatial recall.

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Lailat and Jessica on fieldwork at Niassa

Lailat Guta and Jessica van der Wal returned to the Niassa Special Reserve, to visit our long-term collaborators in the Mbamba honey-hunting community and at Mariri Environmental Centre. As part of Lailat’s MSc research on the relationship between honey-hunting and the broader ecosystem, Lailat and Jessica are conducting interviews with honey-hunters and other knowledgeable individuals to document the economic and cultural values of trees and crops, and their dependence on bees.

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