PIRE: Golondrinas de las Americas: Integrated Pan-American Research and Training in Organisms and Environments

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

0730180 Winkler PIRE: Golondrinas de las Americas: Integrated Pan-American Research and Training in Organisms and Environments This project develops a network of researchers called Golondrinas de las Americas. It leverages an existing collaboration of professional and student researchers who study highly tractable Tachycineta swallows at more than 35 sites spanning the Western Hemisphere, allowing tests of unprecedented resolution and power on a multitude of long-standing hypotheses about global-scale ecological patterns. In addition to creating a sustainable network of intellectually linked professional scientists, it fosters the training of US and host-country students at these sites, including built-in mechanisms for international interaction and the support of student-led research. This project is investigating the causes of latitudinal differences in clutch size, a fundamental pattern that occurs in many other birds but which has never been comprehensively investigated across a large number of sites. The research is evaluating four clusters of environmental and organismal hypotheses as they affect life histories and their linkage, in turn, to latitude. Tests with statistical mixed effect models will take advantage of the large number of independent sites, which have widely varying environmental conditions along a gradient spanning Alaska through the equator to Tierra del Fuego. Collaboratively designed and implemented experiments will be used to examine the strongest associations and distinguish between mechanistic/ecological and adaptive/historical interpretations, including (but not limited to) manipulations of nest-cup temperature and brood-size. Analysis will be strengthened by the use of existing robust phylogeny for these birds, and the applications of technology developed by the PIs in this system (portable digital candlers, thermal data loggers, standardized sampling of insect prey, etc.). This project is providing international field and laboratory research experience to a large number of US undergraduate and graduate students from diverse cultural backgrounds, and promoting collaborations among foreign investigators and students and engender continued research initiatives. A cadre of dedicated bilingual US undergrad Interns are being recruited and trained in field methods while they work in collaborative quartets composed of a more experienced US student and two host- country counterparts. In addition to testing core hypotheses, these teams gather data crucial to understanding the effects of climate change on birds and their insect prey. Workshops at every active training site as well as round-tables, workshops and symposia at national and international meetings will be open to all interested biologists, regardless of taxonomic interest, thus expanding the intellectual scope of the project. Golondrinas sites will serve as an entry point for comparative biologists wishing to study other taxa throughout the Americas. All the project's activities and findings will be disseminated through the well-developed web and public outreach activities and infrastructure of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This project addresses fundamental ecological questions that, because of their scale, require testing via a broad network of international researchers. Through these interactions, it creates a sustainable and synergistic research collaboration among biologists from many nations and trains large numbers of US and foreign students for leadership in future collaborative scientific endeavors.This project is funded by the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) with co-funding from the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB).