My friends are used to my frequent and sometimes infuriating habit of stopping whatever I am doing (be it walking, talking or driving) to look at and identify any birds. I have even been known to pull to the side of the road to ogle particularly interesting species, a habit I picked up from my …
This summer’s research adventures took us from Atlanta north. Most recently, we completed an 18-hour road trip (one-way!) to collect various bluebird and tree swallow nests. We survey and collect from hundreds of nests to find just a few parasites on which to do our work. It’s lots of effort, sure, but we’ve had great …
This week in Animal Behavior, we’re talking about learning and cognition. One of my favorite things at this point is to shatter the misconceptions about what ‘smart’ is, and let students compete in similar tasks to test species. This helps to point out many species are incredibly good at solving puzzles– sometimes even better than …
Bar-headed geese migrate annually between Mongolia and Tibet or India, which means they have to cross the high-elevation Himalayas. Scientists used to believe they flew at a constant, high altitude before coming down to land. However, after implanting tracking devices in migrating geese, scientists found out that they fly up and down to follow mountains’ …
I have gotten busy enough with the start of a new semester that I haven’t posted all the science news I have saved in over a week. For now, I will do some briefer entries just so I can get through some of them. The California Condor used to be so close to extinction that …
I feel very behind on my posts, but have a lot to share, so hopefully I’ll be updating close to daily for a while! In the hills around Altamont Pass on the edge of the San Francisco Bay Area, a new type of wind turbine used for producing wind energy will be tested for at …
As niches are filled up by new species speciation slows down. Comes to a halt, even. This makes sense, as the niches are ways of life that organisms can have, if there are no other ways of life currently available, thing will stay the same. This is in line with a mode of speciation driven …
Poor Martha. The last passenger pigeon that we know of in existence died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914, after living her last four years alone and barely moving in her cage. I have been fascinated with extinct North American animals since I was a child, and the passenger pigeon was no exception. I had …
When last we met, I threw a bunch of jargon around (What is Telecoupling?). If you’re anything like me, you wonder what all this jargon is and why it’s necessary. Systems and agents might make sense, but how do you decide which ones are relevant? What is a flow and how do you measure it? …
Where do I fit into this picture? How can I possibly help to sustain an entire species? That’s just it – you’re never alone in science. Previously, I mentioned the phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants,” but the great thing about science is that I actually get to work with the “giants” of Kirtland’s …
Does your sweetheart smell sexy? It might not be only their looks that make them hot… or not. Scent is one of the most basic ways animals exchange information, but many animals are thought to primarily use other modes of communication, like acoustic or visual signals, to indicate their status and quality as a mate. …