Congratulations to Mia, Olivia, and Will for receiving research grants from the Denver Field Ornithologists! And thanks for the DFO for continuing to support the work being done in our lab. These small research grants make many aspects of research possbile and we feel very fortunate.
Mia will use her grant funding to continue her work on the Boulder Chickadee Study examining differences in nestling development between black-capped and mountain chickadees, and within and outside of urban areas. Stay tuned for some nest cam footage from this coming season!
Olivia will use her funds to conduct her honor's thesis work which will explore regional variation in black-capped chickadee song between neighboring mountain canyons. Olivia is already out in the field beginning to collect recordings of singing chickadees who, despite the
snow and cold weather, are gearing up for the breeding season.
Will will use his funds to continue his exploration of a novel hybrid zone between eastern and western lineages of the house wren. This work, in collaboration with Dr. Garth Spellman at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, will transition from using ddRAD to whole genome sequences as we try to better document the extent of admixture in our local populations of house wrens.
Congrats everyone and thank you DFO!