Lost in the flurry of trying to get other manuscripts out this year, I forgot to mention we had a new publication out earlier this year.
When breeding birds at two different temperatures for a study I started noticing drastic differences in nest structure based on temperature, so I saved the first nests these birds build (before raising chicks in them) when they were breeding at the different temperatures.
These nest sat around for too long in a box – as we had student volunteers come in that were interested in small projects, but of course favoured doing hands on work with live birds over picking apart dusty nest. That was until Bridget Campbell! She toughed out the dusty tedious work of pulling apart the nests of their component parts and was rewarded with a nice first author publication! It was great working with someone with the interest to see a project all the way through, take efforts to do the data analysis and writing up the first draft of the paper. These are the kind of volunteers we all dream of!
Nest built at 18ºC
Nest built at 30ºC
