The Max Planck – University of Cape Town Centre for Behaviour and Coevolution is dedicated to researching species interactions in Africa. The Centre investigates how behaviour, learning, communication, evolution, and biodiversity are interrelated and how a changing environment affects these relationships. Many of its research projects focus on coevolution between brood-parasitic birds and their hosts, as well as cooperative relationships between birds and humans.

The Centre for Behaviour and Coevolution is the eighteenth Max Planck Centre to open thus far, and the first one established on the continent of Africa. It aims to provide support and encouragement to the next generation of African biologists (also via public outreach and citizen science), to promote and facilitate research within and between countries in Africa, and to bolster Afro-European scientific collaborations in this field.

The Centre was formally opened in June 2024 and marks the beginning of an official collaboration between Prof. Bart Kempenaers and his Department of Ornithology at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence’s Seewiesen site and Prof. Claire Spottiswoode and the project she leads (see African Cuckoos and African Honeyguides) at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology (University of Cape Town). The Centre will run for five years, with an option to further extend the partnership after this period has ended.