Look here to see what’s new!
August 2021
This month both myself and undergraduate Samantha Bowser presented our research at the American Ornithologist Society's 2021 virtual conference. Again, amazing job Samantha putting together and practicing your talk in order to deliver an exceptional presentation at your first professional conference!
July 2021
Our preregistration studying great-tailed grackle vocalizations was also recommended following peer-review at Peer Community in Ecology (here)! I'm so proud of undergraduate Samantha Bowser for pushing through the iterative peer-review process and for being my first student to complete this process! Well done Samantha!
This month I also took a vacation! I travelled home to Canada and undertook a 14d quarantine before seeing my dear family including my 96yo grandmother in northern Ontario. It had been more than a year since I was able to see any family while I postdoc'd in the United States and the borders between the two nations were closed to non-essential travel.
One part of being a postdoc (and being a non-citizen working in the United States) is that sometimes you find out too late that a funding agency is not able to disperse funds to you because of your status. This month I had a successful postdoc funding application with Texas A&M to work with Dr. Jenny Phillips. The funders only realized later that they would be unable to disperse funds to non-citizens.
June 2021
This month had some ups and downs. I'll start with the bright spots!
- I had another first-authored publication accepted! This time at the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, our research examined "The Morphology of Migration" in the Tyrannus genus of birds using comparative phylogenetic methods. We discovered that after accounting for non-independence due to phylogenetic relatedness, migratory taxa have longer and pointier wings, and shorter, deeper, and wider bills than sedentary taxa. [Preprint]
- A co-authored publication from my last postdoc was accepted at Animal Behavior & Cognition that found that great-tailed grackles that demonstrated higher levels of behavioral flexibility were also better at inhibition. [Preprint]
- Another co-authored publication from my last postdoc was accepted at Peer Community Journal that found no evidence that great-tailed grackles demonstrated causal cognition in an aviary experiment that I ran after teaching wild birds to use touch-screens. [Preprint]
Our preprint "Predicting Bird Distributions Under Global Change" was edited for submission to the journal Ecography after being rejected at Global Change Biology.
There was also a non-fatal shooting of multiple people outside my home this month that really shook me. I post this here in an effort to normalize appreciating the many things that can be going on outside of our research lives that we need to be able to slow down to pay attention to. I took some time after this to reassess my personal safety and reflect deeply on the current increase in gun violence across the United States.
May 2021
I am overjoyed to share that we submitted our manuscript entitled "Predicting Bird Distributions Under Global Change" to the journal Global Change Biology. This paper was the result of consistent effort from symposium participants in a symposium I organized for the North American Ornithological Congress 2020 called (you guessed it!): "Predicting Bird Distributions Under Global Change"!
Preprint URL: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.26.445867v1.
Likewise so proud of my undergraduate, Arizona State University's Samantha Bowser, for being awarded a Sigma Xi Grants in aid of Research (GIAR) grant to support her work studying vocalizations in Quiscalus mexicanus. Read more about her work here: http://maggiepmacpherson.com/quiscalus-vocalizations-project/.
April 2021
I was so relieved and grateful to be able to receive my second vaccination against the COVID-19 virus this month. Please, if you're able go get the vaccine to help keep your friends and neighbors safe.
March 2021
Our manuscript "Do the more flexible individuals rely more on causal cognition? Observation versus intervention in causal inference in great-tailed grackles" received in principle acceptance in post-study peer review at Peer Community In Ecology. See the link to our peer-review here.
Our manuscript "Are the more flexible great-tailed grackles also better at behavioral inhibition?" received in principle acceptance following minor revisions in post-study peer review at Peer Community In Ecology.
Our preregistration "A study on the role of social information sharing leading to range expansion in songbirds with large vocal repertoires: Enhancing our understanding of the Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) alarm call" (preprint here) received revision needed in pre-study peer review at Peer Community in Ecology.
Through my Associate Editor work at the international ornithological journal IBIS, I was awarded a free conference attendance to attend the British Ornithologists Union 2021 conference that took place March 30 - April 1, 2021.
Stay tuned for exciting news regarding my paper (preprint here) on the timing of trophic niche shifts in a Neotropical austral migrant bird that was resubmitted following revisions to The Wilson Journal of Ornithology.
February 2021
February has come in like a lion, indeed!
My symposium "Predicting Bird Distributions Under Global Change" was accepted for the next International Ornithological Congress in Durban, South Africa - 2022. I look forward to bringing you exciting announcements leading up to the congress from myself and my co-convener, Dr. Miguel Marini of Universidade de Brasília.
Our manuscript on "Using Touchscreen Equipped Operant Chambers to Study Animal Cognition. Benefits, Limitations, and Advice", was published at PLOS ONE. Link here.
January 2021
Happy New Year! January was a long and busy month, mostly filled with job applications for me. Here are some of the exciting developments.
Coming soon: I did an educational video for LSUMNS on using phylogenies to answer questions about the impact of climate change.
Our manuscript on "Using Touchscreen Equipped Operant Chambers to Study Animal Cognition. Benefits, Limitations, and Advice", was accepted at PLOS ONE. See the preprint link below; I'll update a link here once the paper is available online.
Our manuscript "Do the more flexible individuals rely more on causal cognition? Observation versus intervention in causal inference in great-tailed grackles" received in principle acceptance following minor revisions in post-study peer review at Peer Community In Ecology.
Our manuscript "A study on the role of social information sharing leading to range expansion in songbirds with large vocal repertoires: Enhancing our understanding of the Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) alarm call" was accepted for pre-study peer review at Peer Community In Ecology. See the preprint link below; I'll update a link here once the paper is available online.
December 2020
December is off to a great start!
Check out my preprint at OSF entitled "Evidence of a trophic niche shift in an omnivorous migratory bird in South America: A comparison of stable isotope signatures in feathers between migratory and sedentary subspecies of Tyrannus savana".
Preprint URL: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/EZVWN.
On behalf of all co-authors, we're happy to have this citable preprint available while the manuscript undergoes review at The Wilson Journal of Ornithology. 🙂
Samantha Bowser of Arizona State University also submitted our preregistration for pre-study peer review to Peer Community In Ecology early this month. Check out what we have planned for "A study on the role of social information sharing leading to range expansion in songbirds with large vocal repertoires: Enhancing our understanding of the Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) alarm call".
Preprint URL: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2UFJ5. Note: This is a citable preprint.
*This paper is student-led by an undergraduate student at Arizona State University (ASU) that I worked with during my postdoc at The University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Early in December, undergraduate student Sam and I were able to embark on a socially distanced expedition to Southeast Arizona to find Quiscalus mexicanus monsoni to start data collection for Sam's undergrad research. Thanks to Andre Moncrief of Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science for loaning us some recording equipment to help us get started! 🙂
November 2020
More collaborative research from my postdoc working on #TheGrackleProject is starting down the post-study peer review pipeline. Check out what's new below:
SUBMITTED: Blaisdell et al. Do the more flexible individuals rely more on causal cognition? Observation versus intervention in causal inference in great-tailed grackles. PCI Ecology. Submitted for post-study peer review in November, 2020.
Preprint URL: https://psyarxiv.com/z4p6s/.
IN REVISION: Seitz et al. Using touchscreen equipped operant chambers to study comparative cognition. Benefits, limitations, and advice. PLoS ONE. Invitation to revise and resubmit received in November, 2020.
Preprint URL: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.03.324814v1?rss=1.
*This paper is student-led by a Ph.D. student at The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) that I worked with during my postdoc at The University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB).
October 2020
This month I dug into my new postdoc research studying the evolution of migration in suboscine birds at Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science and worked to push a few more products from collaborative projects into publication.
Here's what's new:
RESUBMITTED: Higdon et al. Predicted distribution of the Plains Spotted Skunk in Arkansas and Missouri. Journal of Wildlife Management. Resubmitted in October, 2020.
*This paper is student-led by a Master's student that I worked with during my postdoc at The University of Missouri (Mizzou).
SUBMITTED: Seitz et al. Using touchscreen equipped operant chambers to study comparative cognition. Benefits, limitations, and advice. PLoS ONE. Submitted in October, 2020.
Preprint URL: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.03.324814v1?rss=1.
*This paper is student-led by a Ph.D. student at The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) that I worked with during my postdoc at The University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB).
September 2020
I started a new postdoctoral research position at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science to continue my research studying animal distributions by testing hypotheses for the evolution of migration (and it's converse, residency) in Neotropical subocine birds.
Check out my General Authorship Guidelines that I've adopted in an effort to contribute to the decolonization and deimperialization of academia. These guidelines outline criteria for co-authorship on research products that places value on the contributions of local communities without whom many field research projects would not be possible.
August 2020
We will soon be submitting the post-study analyses and discussion for the collaborative work "Do the more flexible individuals rely more on causal cognition? Observation versus intervention in causal inference in great-tailed grackles" that passed pre-study peer review in 2019.
Check out this video to see the grackles I trained to use touchscreens to conduct the experiment. The video shows Diablo, Mofongo, and Taquito participating in the training and testing phases of the experiment.
May 2020
As temperatures started to rise into the 100's (Farenheit) almost daily, I was able to wrap up the aviary experiments and meet the minimum sample size requirements for all of our planned experiments at the Arizona field site. This was quite a feat, requiring earlier mornings and new approaches tailored to eek out more trials and sessions per day when the grackles were more willing to participate. On the day of the last birds release (you were awesome, Mofongo!) our team, outfitted with masks, kept six feet apart to tear down the rooftop aviaries at Arizona State University and moved the parts to storage in anticipation of the project's move from Arizona to northern California later this summer.
April 2020
This month, I worked closely with collaborators at UCLA to submit my first post-study product on #TheGrackleProject (Seitz, McCune, MacPherson, Blaisdell & Logan, 2020)! We submitted our manuscript on how to train wild birds to use touchscreens to Royal Society Open Science, a journal that supports open access to research.
March 2020
The overarching theme of this month was the new challenges of research during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA. Because I work with live, wild-caught birds, myself and other research staff on #TheGrackleProject were deemed to be essential personnel at our field site at ASU and I continued to work after implementing new sanitization and social distancing measures. I developed new protocols, such as daily bleaching of surfaces etc., and the team also undertook a major overhaul of undergraduate research on the project. To complete research credit hours, we moved all undergraduates working on #TheGrackleProject from conducting field research outside on campus to digital only research that they could do from the safety of their homes, mainly coding video recordings of experiments conducted in the aviaries.
February 2020
February was a difficult month for aviary research on #TheGrackleProject. After so many dedicated hours, trying to work with the stunning female grackles, I had to release the three female grackles that I had (Elote, Paella & Concha) due to their unwillingness to participate in aviary experiments. I also released two males (Pernil & Huachinango) for failing to become good participators in the aviary experiments. By the end of the month, the field team was able to replace 3 of these birds with new adult males: Taquito, Pollito & Guacamole.
January 2020
Happy New Year!
This month I've been admiring the beauty of the female great-tailed grackles in our study population in Arizona. Although the male great-tailed grackles seem to be easier to work with in the aviaries (but see note about Pavo, below), the great-tailed grackle population in Tempe appears to be heavily skewed towards females. As our mist nets were catching so many females compared to males, our team decided to give the females another chance in the aviary tests! I've had the pleasure of working with Yuca (released January 23rd after successfully completing all aviary experiments), Elote, Paella, and Concha; four really pretty female great-tailed grackles! Check out this Instagram post (#thegrackleproject) of me paying homage to Elote, my favourite of the female grackles.
December 2019
December marked the first releases of great-tailed grackles from the aviary since I began on the project. Diablo, Burrito, & Adobo were three adult males that we released after they completed all of the aviary experiments (n= 9 aviary experiments). Taco was a juvenile male that was exposed to the full test battery as a pilot project; he was released without having to fully complete two of the experiments: the reversal learning tube experiment passed the first reversal (because that is as far as control test birds have to go before getting a control treatment) and the social demonstrator training (because he did not learn how to solve the complicated lock he was assigned). These four males were fit with radio-tags and are now being tracked to correlate the results of the aviary experiments with behavior in the wild. Pavo was released without a radio-tag, and was replaced because he would not participate in the first aviary test.
This month we submitted a new preregistration to Peer Community In (PCI) Ecology for a study on male parental care in great-tailed grackles that has been documented by our research group. Read More.
November 2019
With the hard work of the field team, we filled the aviary with wild caught great-tailed grackles from Arizona State University's campus.
I delivered an invited seminar on my research "What determines (seasonal) range limits?", that linked my PhD research studying the evolution of bird migration in the Tyrannus genus with my current research studying range expansion in great-tailed grackles.
October 2019
Now with 5 male Great-tailed Grackles in the aviaries at the Arizona State University field site, I've been able to try out nearly the complete battery of behavioural tests I'll be using to assess behavioural flexibility on wild-caught birds. Below you'll see Taco, from aviary #3, attempting to solve a complex lock on a wooden multi-access box to access food rewards (designed by K.B. McCune). By recording how he solves each of the doors while in the aviary, we can assess his motor diversity and see how he applies that to foraging behaviour when he is released and tracked in the wild.
When I accepted my current position, I joined a research group of folks who agree to pursue publishing in only 100% open access journals at ethical publishers. As I learn more about the diversity of ways to share the knowledge that I've gained so that it's most accessible to interested readers regardless of their access to for-profit journals, I've decided to share my research through OSF (the Open Science Framework) and delete my accounts at other free services that harvest data based on the content that I and my page visitors freely provide in order to turn a profit. Please bear with me as I share new research through OSF and add prior research free institutional repositories at the universities where each piece of research was conducted. In this way, I hope to provide links to my research products that can be legally, and freely accessible to anyone with the internet. In the meantime, please always feel free to e-mail me to request copies of my research products.
I became a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (a.k.a. DORA) that states that I will (1) make assessments for funding, hiring, tenure, or promotion based on scientific content rather than publication metrics, (2) cite primary literature in which observations are first reported rather than reviews in order to give credit where credit is due, (3) use a range of article metrics and indicators on personal/supporting statements, as evidence of the impact of individual published articles and other research outputs, and (4) challenge research assessment practices that rely inappropriately on Journal Impact Factors and promote and teach best practice that focuses on the value and influence of specific research outputs. Read the full declaration here.
September 2019
As temperatures dip into the low 100s (F) at the Arizona State University field site, #TheGrackleProject has been able to start bringing males into our rooftop aviaries to begin aviary testing. This month sees me spending less time out in the field in exchange for more time testing food-motivated captive Grackles to measure their cognitive flexibility (just one of the quantitative variables being tested to explain recent range shifts in this dynamic species).
August 2019
I started a new postdoctoral position working on #TheGrackleProject with Dr. Corina Logan at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. My research on this project will use Bayesian network (BN) models to better understand how Great-tailed Grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) have expanded their range so rapidly during the last century.
April 2019
Working with USGS and Missouri Department of Conservation partners, I identified spatial data layer needs to inform the BBN beta models for the 8 surrogate species for Missouri's wetlands. I also worked closely with these scientists to provide them with a template BBN model that resulted from identifying similarities across beta networks (coming soon to this post).
March 2019
Now that all of the expert elicitation interviews were completed, February and March were spent combining the information from alpha literature reviews with expert knowledge to build beta models.
At the end of this month, I held a workshop for Missouri Department of Conservation wetland scientists on the foundations of probability theory and Bayesian networks. This workshop also entailed a hands-on introduction to building BBNs using Netica software and using its geospatial plug-in, GeoNetica, as well as how to construct conditional probability table surveys to elicit knowledge from experts on beta network models (the result of the union between alpha literature review models and expert knowledge).
February 2019
I presented a synopsis of my project and preliminary results at the Missouri Natural Resources Conference in Osage Beach, MO this month. This was the first regional or natural resources conference I'd ever been to and it was a lot of fun!
As I'd never attended a conference like this before, I was surprised by the creative scientific research both resulting from and informing future (sometimes imminent) policy and management decisions. The small conference was impressive and helped me reinvest in a personal belief that meaningful progress can (because it is!) be made to protect wildlife.
January 2019
January marked the completion of our expert elicitation interview process with the final 3 interviews: Mallard, Sora and Gray Treefrog. The Mallard and Gray Treefrog habitat literature was IMMENSE and I couldn't have gotten through it in time for the expert interviews without the help of Matt Dear at the Missouri Department of Conservation. Thank you Matt! Matt helped identify articles from the >2000 article return from our standardized GoogleScholar search string (with a liberal eye) that I could later read through to select the appropriate articles to build the alpha networks for these species.
At the end of January, I think I tweeted to celebrate and then took a nap.
December 2018
December 2018 was a whirlwind! In December, I conducted a further 3 8-hr expert elicitation interviews (Paddlefish, Small-mouthed Salamander, and Prothonotary Warbler) as well as completing thorough literature reviews of habitat requirements for these 3 species.
The first step in developing Bayesian belief network models is to build an alpha model that depicts our understanding from literature (both gray and peer-reviewed). This alpha model is then updated to create a beta model with input from expert knowledge, meaning that the alpha models have to be completed prior to interviewing experts. In December, the project seriously ramped up with coordinating expert meetings (hundreds of e-mails, organizing food orders and setting up remote log-in capabilities for folks too far afield to join meetings in person) and immersing myself into the habitat literature of these 3 species.
November 2018
November began my first of 8 expert elicitation interviews to build Bayesian belief network models for Missouri's wetland-dependent species. The first 2 species were Least Bittern and Pectoral Sandpiper. This step was the result of a thorough investigation of taxonomic experts for wetland species the Midwest that included contacting over 100 experts at private, academic and government institutions. Our expert interviews comprised of a minimum of 3 taxonomic experts and at least 1 public lands manager in the state of Missouri (with no repeats).
These structured interviews lasted for 8 hours and required additional help from volunteer note-takers (MU School of Natural Resources graduate students encouraged by gaining knowledge about BBNs, opportunities to network with biologists working across Midwest and free lunch) to whom I will be forever grateful!
The research team elected to table developing a model for Topminnows because that model would be representing a group of species and a BBN for them might not follow the same procedure as single-species models. We also tabled developing a model for American Toad because it was unclear how to map (the product goal of my postdoc) the ephemeral habitat needed for breeding in species reliant on temporary wetlands (< 90 days of inundation).
October 2018
In October, I helped the research partners select surrogate species for Missouri's wetland habitat representative of 10 wetland ecological and landscape setting categories. Species were selected if they were found at a broad spatial scale (i.e., across the state) and were sensitive to perturbation along the ecological and landscape setting axis that they were selected for.
Our choices were as follows:
Frequency of Inundation - Paddlefish (frequent), Gray Treefrog (infrequent)
Land Cover - Mallard (herbaceous annual), Sora (persistent perennial), Prothonotary Warbler (forested wetlands), Pectoral Sandpiper (mudflat)
Inundation Duration - Topminnows (4 species chosen; permanent), Least Bittern (semi-permanent), Small-mouthed Salamander (seasonal), American Toad (temporary).
September 2018
In September I completed a cycle of structured decision analysis with my research team comprised of partners at USGS and the Missouri Department of Conservation to select categories along axes reflecting wetland ecological and landscape settings (duration of inundation, frequency of inundation, and land cover) that will be the foundation for choosing surrogate wetland species for the state of Missouri. This happy moment was the result of five 4-8 hr meetings (and many e-mails) across 4 months.
August 2018
In August I presented my postdoctoral research at the International Ornithological Congress in Vancouver, Canada. This international congress meets only every four years, and it was such a great opportunity to share my research, reconnect with ornithologists from my past, visit my home country and see marine mammals (i.e., Orcas and Harbour Seals)!
This month the first publication from my postdoctoral work was published at the journal of Biological Conservation. You can find "A review of Bayesian belief network models as decision-support tools for wetland conservation: Are water birds potential umbrella taxa?" here.
July 2018
My postdoc with the USGS (United States Geological Survey) Cooperative Unit at Mizzou has brought new connections with the USGS and USFWS (United States Fish and Wildlife Service). This month I was able to participate as an observer at a Structured Decision Making workshop hosted by USFWS's NCTC (National Conservation and Training Center). This week-long experience in Gainesville, Florida provided me with experience in Decision Analysis for conservation issues covering the range of issues from critically endangered salamanders in coastal habitats to invasive pests in the everglades.
One of my Ph.D. chapters came out in The Auk this month. You can find "Follow the rain? Environmental drivers of Tyrannus migration across the New World" here.
June 2018
This month I had the pleasure to be accepted into an NSF-funded workshop "The Search for Selection" at NIMBioS (National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis). Thank you to NIMBioS and Dr. Bruce Walsh from the University of Arizona for such an informative and engaging week!
May 2018
May was a very busy and exciting month!
I had the good fortune to be invited as a seminar speaker for the Department of Biology at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. Thank-you to my good friend from our Ph.D. days at Tulane University, Dr. Cooper Battle, for the invitation!
May also brought with it the first round of expert interviews for a Bayesian belief network I am building with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to better understand seasonal population dynamics of the federally endangered gray bat (Myotis grisescens).
Postdocs seem to rarely have dull moments, and a testament to this was that I was also accepted into an NSF-funded short course on analyzing animal movement data using the MoveBank portal and tools. This excellent workshop was graciously hosted by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. Especial thanks to Dr. Roland Kays (NCSU, NCMNS), Dr. Gil Borher (OSU), Dr. John Fieberg (UMN), and Sarah Davidson (OSU, MPIO) for such an in-depth workshop on uploading, exploring, and understanding animal tracking data!
The month rounded out with an oral presentation of our first project with the Missouri Department of Conservation (see reference to submitted manuscript from April) at the Society of Wetland Scientists meeting. Our presentation was entitled: "Waterfowl as umbrella taxa for wetland management decisions: Using Bayesian belief networks to evaluate potential for other taxa under the umbrella".
April 2018
I submitted the first manuscript from my postdoc at Mizzou. Fingers crossed!
UPDATE: You can find the first publication from my postdoctoral work here, at the journal of Biological Conservation.
One of my Ph.D. chapters was accepted for publication at The Auk. Please stay tuned for a link to the July issue where it will appear!
UPDATE: You can find this publication here.
February 2018
This month I had the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of Mizzou's HPC Cluster: Lewis (yes, after THAT Lewis ( ... & Clark)). The University of Missouri is well stocked with exceptional staff that helped me remotely access Lewis to debug FLightR code and fit more accurate location estimates of Tyrannus geolocator data to MaxEnt models.
January 2018
Happy New Year! This January, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop on Bayesian networks hosted by Innovative Decisions, Inc. in Vienna, Virginia, USA. As the only ecologist, I had a wonderful week learning about this mechanistic statistical approach alongside many members of 'the agency' (the assumption was the CI - agency) trying to solve important challenges surrounding national security. They were a cheerful bunch, eager to ask my advice on the identification of birds they'd spotted around the world 🙂
Back at Mizzou, I kicked off the spring semester with a new krewe for SNR's Writing Workshop. Stay tuned for updates on the successes of our keen writers!
December 2017
My School of Natural Resources weekly Writing Workshop had a successful semester at Mizzou. The anonymous exit survey responses indicated that Writing Workshop resulted in 9 manuscripts that could be sent to co-authors, 8 manuscripts being submitted or resubmitted to journals for publication, and 3 manuscripts having positive (accepted or revise and resubmit) responses at the time of the survey. 100% of participants agreed that Writing Workshop helped them identify and undertake writing goals they would not have approached on their own. I am thrilled and anxious for the Spring 2018 semester to begin so that our group can continue to facilitate the development of excellency in scientific writing at Mizzou's SNR.
I became an Associate Editor at a prestigious ornithological journal, Ibis.
September 2017
I began a post doctoral researcher position at the University of Missouri developing species distribution models using Bayesian networks with Dr. Lisa Webb.
May 2017
I graduated from Tulane University with a Ph.D.! You can now call me "Dr. MacPherson" and as of October you can order a print copy of my dissertation here, or e-mail me for a .pdf.
March 2017
I successfully defended my Ph.D. in the department of Ecology & Evolution at Tulane University. You can watch my defense at you leisure with credit to the power of modern technology.
August 2016
I was on the winning team (and the only female finalist contestant) for the North American Ornithologist Congress IV quiz bowl (Washington, D.C.)!
Check out my poster from NAOC 2016! I presented some results from my second chapter which tackles how boreal versus austral migrant flycatchers may track different types of resources in their annual cycles.