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: 
Monitoring of Biological Diversity – a response to Danielsen et al.

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.  
Dave stated that with the aid of Jeff's banding system, "[as] you get to know them as individuals, you can't help but anthropomorphize.  There's one that abuses her offspring, one that [acts like he's] God's gift to terns, another that loves mackerel.  There are devoted parents, and a male that courts anything that moves."   One interesting thing Dave and Jeff discovered is that a variety of different scams and tricks are used to steal food.  Some Roseates snatch fish in flight from Common Terns while others block access to their neighbors' chicks then beg for the food delivery themselves.  Even the allure of sex is used to flirt and then snatch the food from a preoccupied male.  Once Dave and Jeff had determined that birds were consistent thieves from year to year, by going back through a 10-year period of Jeff's records they found that thievery works well for these specialist birds - they typically are the most productive parents on the island, especially in "poor food" years.  

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    

HiLites Contact: Regina Lanning, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, 301-497-5509

See Previous HiLites:

January 13, 2003
January 27, 2003
February 4, 2003
February 11, 2003
March 3, 2003
March 17, 2003
March 24, 2003
April 4, 2003
April 18, 2003
April 25, 2003
May 9, 2003
May 23, 2003
June 2, 2003
June 16, 2003
June 23, 2003
July 7, 2003
August 11, 2003
November 10, 2003