Across the globe, biologists have set up a series of long-term study populations, where all individuals within an animal population are monitored both across their own lifespan and also over many generations. But what's the point of this, and what questions can be answered using long-term studies that can’t be addressed through alternative experiments? 

In this episode of OxPods, biology PhD student Joe Woodman will be interviewing Prof Ben Sheldon FRS, whose research into ecology, evolution and animal behaviour exploits insights from the longest running ecological study of marked wild individual animals in the world, that of the great tit in Wytham Woods.