Hummingbirds in Montana 2010

Sat, 5 Jun 2010 18:20:18 -0700

My research student Keely Corder and I spent the last week in Bret Tobalske’s lab at the University of Montana studying various aspects of hummingbird flight energetics. Our original intention was to explore the energetic cost of primary feather wear on hovering and forward flight. However sometimes wonderful opportunities present themselves and require you to change course. In this case we had the opportunity to use a state-of-the-art thermal imaging camera to look at specific areas of heat production and dissipation on the bird’s body during all modes of flight (see the picture above left). This was such a great opportunity that we ended up having to put aside the feather wear experiment. That’s the way it goes sometimes. The data we collected using this camera will likely end up being fodder for an NSF grant proposal this coming Fall. In addition to the thermal imaging data we collected data for construction of a flight power curve for calliope hummingbirds (the smallest North American species at under 3 g) and measurements of the cost of cross winds on hovering metabolic rate. This latter experiment will help us understand how much ambient wind conditions can impact hovering metabolic rate compared to what we measure in the lab. It was a really full week where we were collecting data up the last minute of our last day on Friday June 4. Click on the gallery above to see some photos of the week’s activities.

Snake Research in Manitoba, Canada

Thu, 20 May 2010 21:37:20 -0700

Jessi-Ann and I spent May 2-15 in Manitoba, Canada studying the reproductive energetics of the red-sided garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis) in collaboration with Dr. Bob Mason of Oregon State University. Dr. Mason has worked on the red-sided garter snake in Manitoba for more than 25 years and were honored by his gracious invitation to join the crew. This is my third Summer working on this project and the time has certainly been productive. To date we have probably collected enough data for 2-3 publications. Our focus on this trip was to compare standard, resting, and courtship metabolism of males that successfully mated with males that actively courted but did not mate and males that seem uninterested in courtship activity (called “loafers”). Our experiments were prompted by our previous findings that mean metabolic rate of a group of courting males can be as much as 20 times resting metabolic rate. While we can easily measure the metabolic rate of groups of courting males we are not able to measure courtship costs in individual males (although we are working on this!). Although this year’s data will not yield true courtship metabolic rates for individual males we are hopeful they will tell us something about the metabolic state of these different types of males. If you want to see some pictures from this year’s trip to Manitoba click on the above gallery to start the slide show.

SICB 2010 Annual Meeting

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:22:11 -0800

Last week the Powers lab (Don and Jessi-Ann) traveled to the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in Seattle, WA where we presented our current work on the reproductive energetics of red-sided garter snakes. This work is being done in collaboration with Dr. Bob Mason’s lab at Oregon State University. Jessi-Ann did a great job manning the poster and answering every question some of the nation’s best reptile biologists threw at her.

Meetings are also a time to do business. During the SICB we met with three of our collaborators to iron out details regarding this coming year’s research activities. This included our May trip to Manitoba for more work on garter snakes, a trip to Montana to Dr. Bret Tobalske’s lab to continue our work on hummingbird flight, and a new collaboration with Dr. Blair Wolf (University of New Mexico) to do some experiments to measure water flux in rough-skinned newts using stable isotopes.

Also at the meeting were former GFU biology students Dr. David Swanson (University of South Dakota) who presented some of his work on freeze tolerance in frogs and Sean Powers (graduate student Western Washington University) who presented his research on lizard energetics.

To see some pictures from the meeting click on the gallery link above.

Snake Research in Manitoba 2009

Wed, 20 May 2009 17:45:47 -0700

Jessi-Ann and I traveled to Manitoba on May 4 to study red-sided garter snakes. These snakes are subspecies of the garter snakes we have here in Oregon. We won’t know much about the quality of our data until the data are analyzed (it will take Jessi a few months to work through the numbers) but I think we have a really productive trip that should yield several high-quality publications.

To see pictures of our trip click on the gallery link on this page.

COS 2009 Annual Meeting

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:20:33 -0700

Jessi-Ann and I traveled to the Cooper Ornithological Society meeting April 16-22 in Tucson, AZ where I was invited to speak at the Hummingbird Conservation Symposium which kicked off the Western Hummingbird Project. The Western Hummingbird Project is a new initiative of the US Forest Service’s Wings Across the Americans program in collaboration with the Hummingbird Monitoring Network. In addition to the science Jessi and I got to do some birding with my colleague Sheldon Cooper from the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Jessi even got to meet my former Ph.D. advisor Wes Weathers (see my blog for pictures)! Now it is time to finish up things at school and get ready to travel to Manitoba to study snakes.