The in-person portion of the meeting will be held at the Academy of Natural Sciences, BEES classroom (3rd floor).
Meeting agenda:
7:15 PM: Zoom opens
7:30-8 PM: Club business
8 PM: Presentation followed by questions (might start earlier if club business finishes earlier).
Please register for the meeting whether you will be attending in person or via Zoom. Then watch for the meeting link in your email. Disregard the meeting link if you will be attending in person.
Beyond the Family: Cooperation and Communication in a Social Bird
Speaker: Christie Riehl (in-person)
Cuckoos are famous for their parasitic laying habits, but not all cuckoos are parasites. The Greater Ani nests in communal groups composed of several unrelated pairs. Each group builds one nest and shares parental care of the mixed clutch. Despite these cooperative behaviors, females can also act as parasites, laying eggs into the nests of other groups and abandoning them. Why do anis nest in groups, and what are the costs and benefits of these strategies? In this talk, Christina Riehl will present findings from her long-running field project in Panama, which aims to understand the evolution of this unusual breeding system.
Christina Riehl received her B.A. from Harvard University in 2005 and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2011. She is now an associate professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton. Her research focuses on the evolution of animal behavior, especially mating systems and parental care in birds. She also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ornithology. In her spare time, she enjoys birding, contra dancing, playing the cello, watching football (especially her hometown team, the New Orleans Saints), and spending time with her husband and 6-year-old son.