Gail, Anna and I are leaving for Wyoming next week, and I’ll be posting updates on our progress here in my blog. To get things rolling, I’m going to re-post an entry from the beginning of last-year’s field season.
Stay tuned for more over the next couple of months as we brave the Wyoming winter to learn more about these fantastic birds!
Juvenile Male Sage-Grouse, Cottontail Lek
2014 already has it’s talons in me, but I am pausing a moment to share some recollections of 2013 that was.
Last year I built upon my first full teaching gig in 2012. I taught both Animal Behavior during the summer and Evolution in the fall of 2013. The summer course was challenging because of the accelerated pace and because of some necessary travel, both scheduled and unscheduled, in the middle of the summer term. I was thankful to have an excellent co-instructor (Jamie Bunting), and I think we ended up putting together a nice class. The fall evolution course went well. Having a set of notes to work from made a huge difference in my sanity- I no longer felt quite as much of a ‘trying-to-keep-up-on-a-high-speed treadmill’ feeling. This let me put a lot more of my effort into improving the course. I was much happier with the exams in terms of length and clarity, and the homeworks and discussion were better integrated with the lecture material. To some extent this was behind the scenes stuff, and led to (I think) a comfortable class in which expectations for both me and the students were clearly presented. I look forward to working harder on lecture formats and classroom interaction next time I teach.
Research-wise, we got several projects out the door. These included our collaboration with Sergio Pellis on fighting dynamics in the grouse, an applied paper on the effects of radio collars on male sage-grouse in conjunction with Dan Gibson and colleagues at the University of Nevada Reno, a commentary on the utility of avian vocal studies that rely on calls instead of songs (with my former labmate Lauryn Benedict), and a review of male cooperation that I completed with other lab mates Sam Diaz-Muñoz, Eileen Lacey, and Emily DuVal. We got some of sage-grouse work out the door as well, an acoustics paper led by Rebecca Koch and our laterality analysis- these are in revision though.
Male Sage-Grouse with the >30g Encounternet tag. Photo GLP.
Our new telemetry tags moved forward in 2013 as well. These tags are intended to give us an unprecedented window into the movement and activity of male grouse off the lek. We were able to do some proof of concept of them in the field at the end of the 2013 season. We followed that up with some testing of the accelerometer function by using some captive chickens in the Avian Sciences facility on campus. Now we’re just waiting for the final tags, and we’ll be ready to break a lot of new ground with our field studies in 2014.
Steamboat Springs, home of the Winter Animal Behavior Conference
2014 is already shaping up to be an exciting year. I got to attend the Winter Animal Behavior Conference a few weeks ago- this is a small, intimate meeting with just a few dozen top behavior folks. The conference strives for a really fun atmosphere. I presented some early analyses looking at differences in the distribution of male mating success on leks of different sizes. It feels great to finally be at the point where we can begin to leverage the multi-lek, multi-year nature of some of our data. I’m hoping that these sorts of analyses can complement our more focused studies and help round out the picture of how “negotiation” on the lek proceeds.
Sage-Grouse usually cut all but the base of the leaf.
Along with making use of our older data, we’re also breaking new ground in the field. In addition to the aforementioned tags, we will conduct our first systematic plant sampling to learn more about variation in quality of the food the sage-grouse depend on during the winter.
This year should see some important and much needed modernization of our workflows as well. We’re finally upgrading our fleet of video cameras to move away from miniDV tapes and onto recording into digital media files on SD cards. This change will necessitate a host of other lab upgrades, including new computer workstations for viewing the video files (we are currently using a trio of refurbished laptops that are literally falling apart) and a robust server to distribute the video files. We may also finally move at least some of our data into a true database instead of simple spreadsheets. These transitions will require quite a bit of planning, but on balance should be big improvements.
Yes, it’s time to worship the tasty dinosaur again. Apart from the gluttony and family time, this season usually sees me revisit my graduate research on wild turkeys. Case in point: I was recently interviewed for the pet website VetStreet for one of those ‘Things you probably don’t know about turkeys’ articles. Luckily the author had already done a little research and we were able to get beyond the “don’t they drown in the rain?” questions.
Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday!
I’m emerging briefly from my fall teaching duties to make a quick announcement: I’ve posted the call for field assistants for our 2014 season! If you or someone you know meet the qualifications and want a fun but intense research experience in a beautiful part of the world, go ahead and send in an application. Ad text below…
FIELD ASSISTANTS (6) needed approximately March 2 – May 4 for investigations of the behavior and ecology of Greater Sage-Grouse near Lander, Wyoming and the scenic Wind River Range. The projects are part of a larger effort in Prof. Gail Patricelli’s lab at UC Davis to understand the environmental and social factors shaping sage-grouse display behaviors- see the following websites for more information (http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/gpatricelli/) and (http://www.alankrakauer.org). Assistants will use video and audio recording technology to support an NSF-funded study of courtship dynamics and display plasticity on the lek. Duties include some or all of the following: maintaining camera and acoustic monitoring equipment, observation of basic courtship behavior and lek counts, GPS surveying, habitat characterization and vegetation sampling, capture of adult sage-grouse, radio-telemetry, data entry, and some computer and video analysis. Assistants must be flexible in their needs and comfortable living and working in close quarters in a remote field station, and able to work in adverse field conditions (mainly MUD, WIND and COLD). Work will be daily and primarily early in the morning, with afternoon and night work required as well. Applicants must have a valid driver’s license, basic computer skills, and have participated in at least one field biology project in the past. Wilderness First Aid or First Responder, and previous experience/certification with off-road driving and/or ATV’s is preferred but not required. Individuals with previous sage-grouse capture experience especially encouraged to apply. Must be able to show proof of United States employment eligibility. Assistants will receive a total stipend of $1600 (~$800/mo) plus food and shared housing, but need to provide their own transportation to Lander and their own personal gear. Please send a cover letter, resume, and contact info for two (2) references to: Alan Krakauer, Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, 2320 Storer Hall, Davis, CA 95616, or preferably by email to ahkrakauer [at] ucdavis.edu. The positions will remain open until filled, and review of applications will begin immediately.
I recently had an email exchange with Kraig Adler, a behaviorist and herpetologist at Cornell. Kraig was one of the faculty members that I got to know best as an undergraduate. In fact, he really put more into undergraduate mentorship outside of the classroom than almost any faculty member I can think of. He was the advisor for the Cornell Herpetological Society, a student-run club that hosted speakers, went ‘herping’ (looking for reptiles and amphibians), and even took overnight field trips to important zoos and collections throughout the eastern part of the country. Kraig sent me a recent article about the CHS, which got me to thinking about some of the important things that go into having a successful time as an undergraduate, one of them being finding a home on campus.
I was pretty fortunate to get involved in research early in my career, starting with some work at the Lab of Ornithology with Charlie Walcott and with Katy and Maurice Tauber in Entomology. These were great experiences, giving me real research projects to get excited about and important one-on-one time with faculty mentors. The CHS provided a different sort of home- not only did we get an incredibly helpful and supportive mentor in Kraig, but also a peer group of motivated students to share in the journey.
When I moved to Berkeley, I quickly saw the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology provided a similar kind of home for undergraduates. Hooked by classes such as Natural History of the Vertebrates, students sought other upper division courses taught by museum curators, and many became regulars at the museum Wednesday seminars. Hanging around got them work study positions or other research opportunities, and as a result, the MVZ became their home-base at UC Berkeley.
A home such as CHS or MVZ gives one a set of familiar faces to seek out on the first day of class. You get study partners, friends, and confidants– these are all important things to make it through the hard times in college. None of these advantages are unique to academic “homes” such as I’ve been talking about; finding any group of folks with shared interest is important for creating a support network for yourself. There’s something a little more to the academic home to which I’m referring, in that these promote interacting with faculty and grad students. This seems important for building confidence and demystifying the academic world a bit. Graduate school is not for everyone, and getting to know people who have/are going through that is really key information for making that decision.
While I’ve met a lot of great undergraduates at Davis, including some who have worked in our lab, I haven’t seen something akin to the CHS or MVZ here. Maybe it’s out there, but I haven’t encountered it yet.