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December 2022
I gave a presentation this month to the Champaign County Audubon Society about my postdoc research characterizing the bird community of the twin cities of Champaign-Urbana across seasons and the public-private divide. We got a lot of positive feedback and recruited a bunch of new participants for our upcoming survey of C-U residents in Spring 2023!!! 
September 2022 In winter 2014, a Dutch friend of mine, Daniel Lamont, was looking for a topic for his undergraduate honors thesis. We spent an hour brainstorming and came up with the idea to do a project on hummingbird metabolism. Now, eight years later (!!!), it is finally published in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology as part of a special issue on torpor! Congratulations to Daniel and my other amazing co-authors for helping finally get this paper over the finish line!! 
Kids showing off their new bird field guides at Camp FRESH in July 2022.
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October 2022
My friend and collaborator Dr. Luke Powell held a really stimulating roundtable on the declines of tropical insectivores. I joined Luke and Drs. Eliza Grames and Jared Wolfe to discuss mechanisms of decline, future research directions, and conservation priorities of this vulnerable guild of birds. The roundtable was conducted in affiliation with TROPIBIO, the European Research Council Chair in Tropical Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research based at CIBIO-Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources in Portugal. Thanks Luke for the invite, and looking forward to future collaborations!
August 2022
We finished our summer mist-netting outreach!! This summer, we ran mist-netting sessions for local kids in collaboration with the Urbana Park District and their two summer camps, Nature Day Camp (ages 6-11) and Camp FRESH (Future Responsible Environmental Stewardship Heroes - ages 11-15). We conducted pre- and post- surveys before and after the mist-netting to understand if and how this type of hands-on outreach experience impacts children's relationships with nature and natural value formation. Stay tuned as we work on analyzing these data!! |
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July 2022
We finished a successful summer field season in Illinois! We sampled 93 greenspaces distributed throughout Champaign-Urbana 5 times each for a total of 365 point counts. We will be exploring these data in the coming months to see how bird community structure varies across seasons, public vs. private greenspaces, and between the two cities. We will also be combining these point count data with an upcoming community-wide survey to understand how and where people interact with birds in the local community. To stay updated, check out our project website: https://human-bird-interactions.nres.illinois.edu/. 
A Black-faced Antthrush (Formicarius analis) from Panama is one of more than 40 understory forest bird species featured in our new natural history book, Elusive Birds of the Tropical Understory. Photo © Dr. John Whitelaw.
May 2022
Today, my good friend and former field tech Nikki Suckow got her first first-author paper in the journal Ethology! Nikki was a student in my Vertebrate Natural History class at the University of Illinois way back in 2016, and then ended up coming to work for me during my postdoc on Guam in 2018. During her time on Guam, she became a seasoned field ornithologist, and ended up developing an independent project on parental aggression behavior in our study species, the Såli (Micronesian Starling). She found that breeding pairs of Såli varied tremendously in their aggressive behavior and that this variation was highly repeatable, suggesting it may be a personality trait. Finally, she found that parental aggression was correlated with offspring hatching success but not nestling or post-fledgling survival, suggesting that aggressive behavior may not necessarily confer fitness benefits in the presence of the invasive brown treensnake on Guam. Congratulations to Nikki, and find her paper here!!! 
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Members of the van Riper lab sampling birds in Brownfield Woods, one of our 93 sampling sites around Champaign-Urbana. Pictured from left to right: Julia Knauz (undergraduate), Carena van Riper (lab PI), Seunguk Shin (PhD student), Devin Goodson (PhD student), and me!
May 2022
It has been a super exciting month! In addition to getting two papers accepted, our long-awaited book on understory birds of Neotropical forests came out this month! The book, Elusive Birds of the Tropical Understory, invites naturalists of all ages to discover the hidden beauty of these often underappreciated birds. It took nearly eight years to publish, but I am so proud to have played even a small part in the process. Big thanks to my co-authors, and especially Dr. John Whitelaw, the photographer who had the vision and resilience to make this book a reality. 
Nikki holding a Philippine Collared-Dove (Streptopelia dusumieri) on Guam in 2018.
May 2022
I am so excited to announce that our paper on long-term declines in tropical birds just got published in PNAS (we made the cover as well)!!! We leveraged 44 years of data to show that ~70% (40 of 57) of understory bird species declined in abundance over the study period in a protected area (Soberania National Park) in Panama. Furthermore, 35 of the 40 declining species exhibited declines of ≥ 50% of their original abundance. Declines were largely independent of ecology (i.e., body mass, foraging guild, or initial abundance) or phylogenetic affiliation. Our findings provide evidence that tropical bird populations may be undergoing systematic declines, even in relatively intact forests. Check out the paper here, and we got some great press coverage as well: |
March 2022
New paper alert! The AVONET database was just published in Ecology Letters (get access here). This gargantuan effort led by Joe Tobias and involving 115 authors from more than 100 institutions provides morphological, geographical, and ecological trait data for ALL of the world's >11,000 bird species! Super proud to have played a small part in it.
New paper alert! The AVONET database was just published in Ecology Letters (get access here). This gargantuan effort led by Joe Tobias and involving 115 authors from more than 100 institutions provides morphological, geographical, and ecological trait data for ALL of the world's >11,000 bird species! Super proud to have played a small part in it.
August 2021
In May 2020, some friends and I stumbled upon a Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) plucking fur from a sleeping Raccoon (Procyon lotor) in Allerton State Park, IL. My curiosity was piqued, and I started digging around in the scientific literature to see if this behavior had been previously documented. I found that it had been reported only about a dozen times sporadically throughout the decades, giving it the appearance of an uncommon chance occurrence. However, a cursory search of YouTube yielded dozens of videos of titmice and other birds plucking hair from dogs, foxes, and even humans, demonstrating that this was a commonly known behavior in the birdwatching community. We just published a review paper on this behavior, which we termed "kleptotrichy", from the Greek roots klepto- ('to steal') and trich- ('hair'), in the journal Ecology. Check it out here, and also check out some of the awesome media coverage we have received!!! |
January 2022
Big news!!! My collaborators at University of Wyoming (Corey Tarwater and Patrick Kelley) and Universidade Federal de Pelotas (Jeferson Vizentin-Bugoni) and I just got awarded an NSF grant! Over the next three years, we will be working to understand the evolution of behavior and species interactions in army ant-following birds across the isthmus of Panama. We will hire two PhD students to conduct cutting-edge experiments to explore the impacts of species loss on the structure and stability of ant-following bird flocks. Please contact me if you are interested! 
A Black-crested Titmouse preparing to engage in kleptotrichy while perched atop a snoozing fox. Photo courtesy of Texas Backyard Wildlife
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Brood parasites are functionally distinct from predators and trophic parasites with respect to a variety of traits. As a result, they tend to be intermediate between predators and trophic parasites on the natural enemy continuum.
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March 2021
Second paper out this month! This was a super fun collaboration with co-authors, Mark Hauber (UIUC), Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy (University of Rochester), and Jeff Hoover (Illinois Natural History Survey) looking at brood parasites and where they fall out on the natural enemy continuum. We argued that they represent a functionally distinct class of natural enemies, merging traits of both predators and trophic parasites. My first foray into the realm of parasitology - check it out here!!! |
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March 2021
New paper alert!!! We just published a comprehensive update of the distribution and abundance of the locally endangered Micronesian Starling on Guam. We found that the population has increased ~15-fold (i.e. from ~100 to ~1500 individuals) since the last survey in the mid-1990s, and starlings appear to be expanding into urban areas throughout northern and central Guam. Overall, it is a conservation success story, with the population recovery likely due to the starlings' tolerance of human disturbance coupled with snake control measures at our study site on Andersen Air Force Base. This paper was a collaborative effort between Colorado State University, Iowa State University, U.S. Geological Survey, and Guam Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources. You can find it here! |
Changes in the distribution and abundance of the Micronesian Starling population over the last four decades on the island of Guam. Figure © Hugo Thierry.
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Martin checking a starling nest box at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. Photo © Nancy Borowick 2018
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February 2021
When I first arrived to the island of Guam in 2017, I met Martin Kastner. Martin had been working as field manager for the Micronesian Starling nest box project for the past year and a half, and I quickly realized that he had a keen eye for animal behavior and natural history. One day, while out in the field radio-tracking starlings on Andersen Air Force Base, Martin drew my attention to what he termed 'fruit islands' - small seedlings or saplings growing out of the bases of larger overstory trees scattered around the housing area. He speculated that these propagules were likely being deposited by the starlings - Guam's only remaining native frugivore - and we devised a simple way to test this. We compared seedling communities under overstory trees between Andersen (starlings present) and a nearby control site (starlings absent), and found essentially no dispersal or regeneration occurring at the control site. These findings confirmed our supposition that starlings were likely dispersing the seeds, providing concrete evidence that even a very small, remnant population can still provide substantial ecosystem services. We just recently published this short and sweet paper in Biotropica - check it out here. Just goes to show you that careful natural history observations can go a long way towards understanding ecology. Congrats to Martin and all!! |
Ant following birds foraging at a swarm of army-ants © 2016 Micah Reigner
January 2021
In 2015, we were invited to do a review paper on birds that follow army ants. Six years later, it is finally published in Ornithology's Special Feature issue "Advances in Neotropical Ornithology"!!! It has been a long and winding road, but a special thanks goes out to my co-authors - Janeene Touchton, Ari Martinez and Patty Rodrigues - for having the perseverance to bring this one over the finish line. Super proud of this review - you can find it here.
In 2015, we were invited to do a review paper on birds that follow army ants. Six years later, it is finally published in Ornithology's Special Feature issue "Advances in Neotropical Ornithology"!!! It has been a long and winding road, but a special thanks goes out to my co-authors - Janeene Touchton, Ari Martinez and Patty Rodrigues - for having the perseverance to bring this one over the finish line. Super proud of this review - you can find it here.
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January 2021
Our paper on heat tolerances made the cover of Functional Ecology!!! Here is a link to the full issue. |
Spotted Antbird (Hylophylax naeivoides) - one of the 58 tropical species whose heat tolerance we measured.
October 2020
My dissertation research comparing heat tolerances of tropical and temperate birds finally got accepted at Functional Ecology!! I am incredibly proud of this paper, and special thanks to all of my field crews, without whom none of this would have been possible! Check it out here.
Press coverage:
Functional Ecology blog
EurekAlert!
My dissertation research comparing heat tolerances of tropical and temperate birds finally got accepted at Functional Ecology!! I am incredibly proud of this paper, and special thanks to all of my field crews, without whom none of this would have been possible! Check it out here.
Press coverage:
Functional Ecology blog
EurekAlert!
August 2020
I was recently featured in a Q & A called 'Meet the Scientist', published in the August 2020 issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine! The interview focused on our article "Rapid colonization and turnover of birds in a tropical forest treefall gap", which was recently published in the Journal of Field Ornithology. Go to www.discoverwildlife.com to check out the magazine online!
I was recently featured in a Q & A called 'Meet the Scientist', published in the August 2020 issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine! The interview focused on our article "Rapid colonization and turnover of birds in a tropical forest treefall gap", which was recently published in the Journal of Field Ornithology. Go to www.discoverwildlife.com to check out the magazine online!
Black-throated Trogon, one of the bird species that is declining in abundance at our long-term study site on central Panama.
August 2020
I presented collaborative work at the virtual North American Ornithological Conference on long-term declines of tropical birds in intact forest of central Panama. The bottom line - 70% of the 57 bird species we modeled declined in abundance over the 43-year sampling period. These trends are very concerning given they occurred in a large, forested preserve (the 20,000 hectare Soberanía National Park).
I presented collaborative work at the virtual North American Ornithological Conference on long-term declines of tropical birds in intact forest of central Panama. The bottom line - 70% of the 57 bird species we modeled declined in abundance over the 43-year sampling period. These trends are very concerning given they occurred in a large, forested preserve (the 20,000 hectare Soberanía National Park).
Part of the gap caused by a large Anacardium excelsum treefall on the long-term research plot in 2015.
April 2020
We just published a paper on the responses of Neotropical birds to a large treefall gap in Panama!
Following gap formation, hummingbirds and understory frugivores increased in abundance and species richness very rapidly (within five months) but only persisted in the gap for 1.5-4 years before returning to pre-treefall levels.
Check out the paper:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jofo.12328.
Press coverage:
https://scienceblog.com/515776/hummingbirds-show-up-when-tropical-trees-fall-down/
We just published a paper on the responses of Neotropical birds to a large treefall gap in Panama!
Following gap formation, hummingbirds and understory frugivores increased in abundance and species richness very rapidly (within five months) but only persisted in the gap for 1.5-4 years before returning to pre-treefall levels.
Check out the paper:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jofo.12328.
Press coverage:
https://scienceblog.com/515776/hummingbirds-show-up-when-tropical-trees-fall-down/
