Ready to lead your own ecological research project in the field? We are looking for Master students interested in evolutionary ecology, sensory ecology, and climate change to join the Qvarnström Lab, studying wild birds. You will be part of our team monitoring natural populations of flycatchers and their hybrids while also collecting data for your own thesis!
Master’s Project 1: Using Olfactory Cues to Find Food
Background: The ability of birds to regulate insect populations is debated but can be a powerful ecosystem service. Many mechanisms behind the foraging efficiency of birds are still being discovered. While it has been shown that excluding birds from crop fields can lead to increased insect damage (e.g., Garcia et al., 2018), their regulation role in natural settings remains unknown as well as the mechanisms by which birds locate the best feeding spots.
Ground-breaking research, including our own, suggests that olfaction may play a crucial role. We have found that genetic variation in olfaction-related genes in collared flycatchers is linked to the amount of caterpillar larvae on their breeding territories. Does this mean that flycatchers actually use olfaction cues to locate trees that are heavily infested with their prey? If true, this means that we have severely underestimated the birds’ capacity to detect and respond to local pest outbreaks.
Objective: To directly test the hypothesis that pied and collared flycatchers use insect herbivore induced emission of biogenetic volatile organic compounds (IH-BVOCs) to identify trees with more caterpillars.
Your Role: You will measure IH-BVOC emissions from sampled tree branches and correlate these with direct bird activity. This will involve:
– Field Observation & Monitoring: Conducting systematic observations and setting up remote video cameras to monitor bird visitation rates to individual trees.
– Chemical Sampling: Collecting branch samples for subsequent chemical analysis of IH-BVOCs.
– Data Analysis: Statistically linking the chemical profiles of trees with recorded bird foraging activity.
– Fieldwork & Data Collection: Participating in long-term data collection by monitoring nest boxes.
This project offers a unique opportunity to contribute to a cutting-edge field and help answer a fundamental question with implications for both basic and applied ecology.
Master’s Project 2: Climate Change, Mismatch, and Survival
Background: Climate change is disrupting the tritrophic terrestrial tree-caterpillar-bird food chain. In our study system, warmer springs cause trees to bud and caterpillars to hatch earlier. However, migratory birds like our study species, the pied and collared flycatchers, have not advanced their breeding schedules as much. This creates a “phenological mismatch”: when the nestlings hatch, the peak abundance of caterpillars they need for food may have already passed.
This mismatch is most severe in warm springs and acts as a powerful agent of natural selection. But there can only be an evolutionary response to selection if there is genetic variation in the traits subject to selection. Why do some nestlings survive these poor conditions while others do not? We hypothesize that an individual’s innate metabolic rate is a key trait that determines their resilience.
Objective: To determine if an individual’s metabolic rate is a key trait determining its resilience to climate-driven trophic mismatches.
Your Role: You will investigate how a nestling’s innate physiology influences its ability to survive this mismatch.
Data Analysis & Modelling:
– Analysing high-resolution metabolic rate measurements from nestlings.
– Working with our long-term demographic dataset (survival, breeding dates, etc.) spanning multiple years.
– Quantifying the annual degree of phenological mismatch between birds and caterpillars.
– Using statistical modelling to determine if offspring with certain metabolic traits have a survival advantage.
Fieldwork & Data Collection: Participating in long-term data collection by monitoring nest boxes.
This project offers a rare opportunity to work at the intersection of physiology, climate change, and evolution, using a powerful dataset to answer a pressing ecological question.
Master’s Project 3: Cognition and regulation of insect populations
Background: Tritrophic interactions, such as the tree-caterpillar-bird food chain, play an important role in the ecosystems. For example, insectivorous birds, such as flycatchers, may have a role in controlling caterpillar populations, reducing the insect damage on trees. Climate change is however disrupting these tritrophic interactions, as warmer springs cause trees to bud and caterpillars to hatch earlier, and birds may not be able to adapt to the earlier emergence of caterpillar larvae quickly enough to avoid population decline. Cognition, and more specifically learning, should provide the right mechanisms for the behavioural adaptation needed in changing environments to cope with variation and uncertainty (Ghosh et al. 2023). To fully understand the general ability of birds to act as active biological control agents it is thus important to consider the cognitive processes underlying behaviours.
Objective: To understand whether individual variation in learning, cognition, and behavioral plasticity in flycatchers have an advantage in foraging and detecting trees with more caterpillar.
Your Role: You will experimentally test how variation in cognitive abilities influence the birds’ ability to identify trees with heavy caterpillar infestations. This will involve:
– Field Observation & Monitoring: Conducting systematic observations and setting up remote video cameras to monitor bird visitation rates to individual trees.
– Behavioural assays: Conduct commonly recognized and used cognition assays to individuals near nestboxes and in aviaries.
– Chemical Sampling: Collecting branch samples for subsequent chemical analysis of IH-BVOCs.
– Data Collection and Analysis: Quantify behaviours from assays recordings and link individual behavioural performance with individuals foraging in trees infested with more caterpillars.
– Fieldwork & Data Collection: Participating in long-term data collection by monitoring nest boxes.
If you are interested in either project, we strongly encourage you to contact us!
Start date is flexible!
Contact persons:
Michaëla Berdougo (PhD student) – michaela.berdougo@ebc.uu.se
Ana Gomes (PostDoc) – ana.gomes@ebc.uu.se
Professor Anna Qvarnström – anna.qvarnstrom@ebc.uu.se