News from Scientists at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
Monday, December 15, 2003
Students Get
Hands-On Experience
Biologists at Patuxent, Sam Droege and Matthew Perry, were a front page feature in the Laurel Gazette regarding the benefits of working with the young researchers from Roosevelt High School’s Science and Technology program, Greenbelt, MD. Perry sees the relationship value as an opportunity to help students get an idea of what wildlife research is all about. One student was actually able to turn his high school science project into a professional publication. Droege students have added to the actual research through their questions. Their data gets added to the overall research project. All in all, both student and mentor add to the future of science. Contact: Sam Droege, Laurel, MD, 301-497-5840; Mathew Perry, Laurel, MD, 301-497-5740 Publication
by Patuxent Scientist In
an October 2003 Oryx publication,
Vol. 37, No. 4, James Nichols (USGS), Nigel Yoccoz (Norwegian
Institute for Nature Research, Norway) and Thierry Boulinier, Paris,
France) disagreed with the comments of Danilsen et al. (2003).
Nichols et al. (2003) stated, “Our only major disagreement
is with their belief that our recommendations are only likely to be
useful in developed countries. We claim that devoting proper attention to the ‘why’,
‘what’ and ‘how’ of biological monitoring is important
irrespective of available resources.
Before discussing this, we stress that we fully realize that
question related to biodiversity monitoring and management involved
political issues that go beyond the scientific questions.” Contact James Nichols, Laurel, MD, 301-497-5660. |
To Catch a Thief The December 2003 Smithsonian Magazine featured a story on cooperative research by Dr. Dave Shealer at Loras College, Iowa, and the USGS's Dr. Jeff Spendelow on the kleptoparasitic (food theft) behavior of some Roseate Terns on Long Island Sound's tiny Falkner Island, a unit of the USFWS's Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). Jeff first visited the island in 1977 as a graduate student and began his now well-known research on the nesting terns the following year. The results of his first 10 years of work at this site played a key role in getting the island added to the NWR system in 1985 and getting Roseate Terns added to the Endangered Species list in late 1987. Also in 1987, Jeff organized and began coordinating a regional study of the metapopulation dynamics of this species and then devised a marking scheme - a unique combination of numbered metal and colored plastic bands that can be seen with a spotting scope from as far as 75 yards away - so that individuals did not require repeated trapping each year to be identified. As a member of his thesis committee, Jeff was so impressed by Dave's Ph.D.
work that in 1995 he invited Dave to Falkner Island to do a study of
chick-feeding by known-aged colormarked birds whose detailed reproductive
histories were being compiled as part of monitoring this population.
Recognizing a unique opportunity, Dave jumped at the offer and during
his 4-year study noticed some individuals had unusually high delivery rates
resulting from the thieving behavior described in the Smithsonian article. During
the past 2 years as the terns have been besieged by predatory Black-crowned
Night-Herons, Jeff's research also has shown that pairs that lose eggs or
young chicks to nocturnal predation may not abandon their nest sites if
given replacement eggs within the first few hours after sunrise the
following morning. By giving
abandoned eggs to known high-quality parent "klepto birds" to
replace their own predated clutches, Jeff was able to increase the
productivity of the Roseate Terns at this site in 2002 by 30% from what it
otherwise would have been. Contact
Jeff Spendelow, Laurel, MD,
301-497-5665 |
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