P-J Guay, RDA Lorenz, RW Robinson, MRE Symonds, MA Weston (2013) Distance from water, sex and approach direction influence flight distances among habituated black swans. Ethology 119: 552-558 PDF
What’s it about?
The title pretty much says it all.
What’s the story behind it?
Rachael Lorenz* was an honours student of Patrick-Jean’s at Victoria University who did this project where she basically walked towards black swans at Albert Park, Melbourne (home of the Grand Prix) and observed their responses. My involvement in this paper came about very late in the process. It had already been submitted from one journal but withdrawn (before acceptance) when Pat and Mike Weston realised there was an error in the data. They rectified it and submitted to Ethology, but it became apparent from the reviews that some more sophisticated information-theoretic analyses were needed for their data. So, at the revision stage I was called in to help and firm-up the analysis. Troubleshooter Symonds.
* Interesting factoid: our co-author has an interestingly colourful history, as a quick Google search may attest.
The Symonds Lab 