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August 2024: A quick note that our lab is no longer active nor based at Kennesaw State University. The wonderful student researchers in the lab have all graduated or moved on to exciting things. PI Sarah Guindre-Parker has retired from academia at the moment. If you want to reach out, feel free! sarahguindreparker[at]gmail.com
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August 2024: New lab paper coming out soon in Ornithology! We use 4 years of starling breeding data from metro-Atlanta and surrounding rural areas to ask whether urban and rural birds breed similarly well across the urbanization gradient. PDF coming soon to our Pubs page.
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January 2024: We've got some new lab publications coming out soon. Check out Michelle's work on lead in starling feathers in Science of the Total Environment and Courtney's work on cholesterol in starling blood in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. PDFs will be available on the lab publication page once available!
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November 2023: The GP lab is excited to share the following article produced with Futurum careers for high school & college students who are interested in our research. Does city life negatively affect wildlife?
Check it out if you teach high school or university students and are interested in using this in your courses. The article comes with a useful activity sheet. This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE). For more information, teaching resources, and course and career guides, see www.futurumcareers.com |
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September 2023: The GP lab has been hard at work trapping starlings all across Georgia as part of our NSF funded study on heavy metals and urbanization in starlings. Way to go Arianna and CareyJo!
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August 2023: Congratulations to MSIB graduate students Rachel Kaplan, Joanna Gresham and Michelle Ross on defending their theses and getting accepted to their top choices of PhD programs in the US and in Canada.
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May 2023: MSIB student Rachel Kaplan is featured in her very own KSU news article. Check out her story and future plans. Very well done Rachel!
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May 2023: Congratulations to high school student Trinity who conducted her capstone project in the GP Lab this spring. She presented her work at a high school showcase. Congrats also to co-mentor Rachel Kaplan who did an excellent job of guiding the research project.
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April 2023: Congratulations to GP Lab undergraduate alum Lauren Mitchell on receiving an NSF GRFP award! Best of luck in graduate school!
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April 2023: Undergrad student Amberlee represented the GP Lab at the Symposium of Student Scholars this spring. She shared her poster titled: The Effect of Urbanization on Starling Egg Size and Parental Investment
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December 2022: I was awarded a Career-Life Balance Supplement from the NSF! Thank you NSF for supporting researchers taking parental leave. This means that the GP lab is looking for a Field Research Coordinator in 2023! The position is full time from Feb to July 2023, and is paid including benefits. We are looking for someone to lead our urban starling field work. See details here.
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November 2022: The GP lab had two undergrad-led posters on display at the Symposium of Student Scholars this fall! Zaynab shared her work on testosterone in salamanders, while Cole shared his work on starling parental care under variable insect availabilities. Cole's presentation was also featured here, so check it out!
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August 2022: We're excited to be NSF funded via the Building Research Capacity program (BRC-BIO). Over the next several years this award will allow our team to support paid graduate and undergraduate research positions exploring heavy metal pollution in urban environments as well as their impacts on animal behaviour and physiology.
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June 2022: Congratulations to Denyelle Kilgour for having her MS thesis accepted for publication in Frontiers in Ecology & Evolution! Stay tuned for a copy of her work on the lab publication page when it becomes available. Lab-mate Courtney Linkous is a co-author on the study, along with KSU professor & collaborator Dr. Todd Pierson. Nicely done team!
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May 2022: Courtney Linkous, who completed her MS degree in the lab this spring, is featured in a fantastic KSU article about outstanding graduates and their future plans. Read about her experience and where she's headed next here!
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May 2022: Our latest paper is out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! Our superb starling made the cover too. Check it out on the journal's webpage, or visit my publication page for a PDF of the article. You can also read a media summary about the article here.
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April 2022: The KSU College of Science and Mathematics hosted their 2022 Outstanding Graduating Students award ceremony this month and GP lab members were recognized for their work! Denyelle Kilgour received the award for Outstanding Graduate in the MSIB program, while Julie Allsen received the award for Outstanding Graduate in the BS in Environmental Science program. Congratulations to them both!
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April 2022: Congratulations to Denyelle Kilgour and Courtney Linkous who both defended their MS degrees in integrative biology this month. Both did exceptionally well during their defense and are moving on the PhD programs this fall.
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April 2022: Congratulations to undergraduate student Jasmine Little on her first paper being accepted for publication to Proceedings of the Royal Society B! Keep an eye out for her work on behavioral plasticity in superb starlings.
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March 2022: Well done to Michelle Ross for receiving a student research grant from the Animal Behavior Society for her work on the behavioral impacts of lead, along with the endocrine mechanisms that may underlie these changes in starlings.
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February 2022: MSIB students Rachel, Joanna and Michelle attend the Georgia chapter's Wildlife Society meeting to present posters about their graduate research plans. Way to go team!
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February 2022: Congratulations to Michelle Ross (again!) for receiving the H. Branch Howe, Jr. Graduate Student Research Award from the Georgia Ornithological Society! This award will fund her work on lead contamination in urban birds.
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January 2022: Michelle Ross was awarded a student membership award from the American Ornithological Society. Congrats Michelle!
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January 2022: Lots of lab SICB news! Denyelle Kilgour delivered a fantastic presentation at the annual SICB meeting in Phoenix, while Courtney Linkous and Sarah Guindre-Parker shared their work at the virtual SICB+ meeting. Last but not least, Joanna Gresham was awarded the first grant of 2022 for the lab, receiving a SICB Grant-in-aid of Research to support her work on how urbanization affects feather reflectance! Congrats team!
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November 2021: Our lab received multiple internal awards! First, Michelle Ross and Jamie Riddle are supported by a Mentor-Protege award to fund their work on urban behavior and heavy metal contamination. Second, Sarah Guindre-Parker was selected to participate in the external mentorship program.
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September 2021: Our lab is participating in an ongoing effort from the Georgia Audubon to monitor bird window collisions via Project Safe Flight Georgia. We are recruiting student volunteers who want to help monitor building collisions on our Kennesaw campus. Learn more about this opportunity here and get in touch.
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July 2021: Our study subjects are award-winning models! Congrats to KSU photographer Jason Getz for his winning photograph of our European starling nestlings. Check it out here!
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July 2021: Learn more about our lab's work on starlings and urbanization here! Thank you to KSU's Strategic Communications team for putting together a lovely multimedia exposure page about our lab's ongoing research.
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June 2021: Congratulations to Courtney Linkous on receiving another student grant for her thesis research! This time the Sigma Xi Society awarded her a Grant-In-Aid of Research to support her work on starling cholesterol in urban versus rural habitats. Way to go!
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May 2021: Congratulations to Courtney Linkous who was awarded a student grant from the American Ornithological Society! This generous support will help Courtney explore differences in feeding preferences in starlings found along an urban-to-rural gradient and test for subsequent differences in nestling physiology that may result from these parental foraging decisions. Congratulations to Courtney, and thank you AOS!
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April 2021: Congratulations to all students who presented at the Symposium of Student Scholars! Grace Fatoyinbo represented the GP Lab's starling project with her presentation on how temperature shapes parental care and reproductive success. This is research entirely conducted as part of our Ecology Lab course. Nicely done Grace!
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March 2021: We are recruiting another Master's student for Fall 2021! Our lab studies how behavioral and endocrine flexibility help birds cope with urbanization. Graduate students in the lab are encouraged to design thesis projects that fall within the broad scope of this research. Details on how to apply here.
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March 2021: Congratulations to incoming MS student Rachel Kaplan who was awarded a highly competitive award from the NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship Program. We can't wait to get started on loads of great bird science and outreach for our community. Welcome Rachel, and congrats again on this achievement!
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March 2021: Current and past GP lab undergraduate students are getting selected for awesome research programs! Congratulations to Julie Allsen for being selected as a Birla Carbon Scholar to undertake funded summer research on starlings! Congrats also to Arianna Acosta who is headed to Montana State this summer as an REU scholar.
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January 2021: I'm excited to receive a Faculty Research Grant from the BlueNotes Group to support my research on Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences in a virtual classroom! Stay tuned for more about this work on the scholarship of teaching and learning.
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December 2020: GP lab member Emma Maltos was a runner up for best undergraduate presentation at the Symposium of Student Scholars this fall for her talk titled "Do Urbanization and Weather Shape the Timing of Breeding in European Starlings?" Congratulations Emma on winning this university-wide award!
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December 2020: The KSU Symposium of Student Scholars has come and gone, and we had three fantastic contributions from the GP lab: Courtney delivered a talk on her preliminary graduate research, Shelby shared a poster of the independent study she conducted on starling parental care, and Emma delivered a talk on her work analyzing starling NestWatch data. Go team!
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October 2020: Our lab is featured in a Research with Relevance episode! Read more about my career path in this researcher spotlight article and check out the episode to learn about my research on costly parental care in an uncertain world performed in collaboration with Dr Glenn Young
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September 2020: Our lab received a Mentor-Protege award from the College of Science and Mathematics. This award will support students Emma and Shelby in performing independent research this spring, as well as presenting their work at a conference. Congrats team!
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August 2020: We're in the press! Read about our lab's first year at KSU on the Field Stations' Summer Days blog, and the university's news page: Biologist finds a home at KSU as teacher, mentor and researcher
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July 2020: Congratulations class of 2020! We're sad to see our senior students fledge but grateful they were part of our team. Thanks for the hard work in getting our field research off the ground this year. Go owls!
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July 2020: The Guindre-Parker lab attends the Animal Behavior Society's virtual meeting! I presented some recent work on physiology and group size in African starlings, while lab members Jasmine Little and Kaitlyn Brown presented their work on starling behavioral plasticity and egg investment. Go team!
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July 2020: Integrative and Comparative Biology recently published a special edition on stress, which includes my article on individual variation in hormone plasticity. Check out the blog post I wrote to accompany this article: do all individuals regulate glucocorticoids similarly?
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May 2020: The lab's first research grant! I was awarded a KSU Seed Grant with collaborator Glenn Young (Dept. Mathematics) to explore whether the costs of breeding in unpredictable environments favor cooperative behavior in birds.
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May 2020: Our lab's recently established field site at the KSU Field Station was featured in the university's New Investigator magazine. Check it out for more info about how the Field Station's urban farm will fit in to our broader research on bird physiology and behavior in Georgia!
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April 2020: We may be running a simplified version of our original field season plan due to COVID-19, but we've got starling hatchlings already! Stay tuned to learn more about our preliminary results on their growth, behavior and physiology across two populations.
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March 2020: We are excited to have two new fantastic students joining the lab this August as part of the MSIB graduate program at Kennesaw State to work on our European starling study system. Welcome Denyelle and Courtney!
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February 2020: I was awarded an Outreach Grant from the Animal Behavior Society to showcase examples of animal behavior right in our backyards to elementary and high school students. Can't wait to start working on this outreach project with our fantastic group of undergraduate student researchers.
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February 2020: We've officially deployed 100 nest boxes in and around Kennesaw! Thanks to Directed Research Methods student Haley for putting up the last box of the season. Our team is eager to monitor these boxes for signs of breeding activity. Bring on the starlings!
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January 2020: New paper accepted in Integrative and Comparative Biology! Stay tuned for the special issue on perspectives in stress research, and my contribution on individual variation in glucocorticoid plasticity.
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December 2019: We have been busy this semester! We are deploying some of our nest boxes in order to study local starlings this spring. A fantastic team of undergraduate students are preparing to examine the behavior and physiology in these animals soon!
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November 2019: Our new paper has been accepted for publication in the American Naturalist. Read the lay summary on our work showing the survival benefits that superb starlings experience by living in large social groups in a fluctuating environment here.
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September 2019: The Guindre-Parker lab is recruiting! If you are interested in pursuing a MS degree in Integrative Biology, consider applying to join the lab!
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August 2019: The Guindre-Parker lab is open for science! If you are interested in working with us, please visit the Join page to learn more about the lab and the projects we currently have available
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June 2019: The Kluane Red Squirrel Project has officially published 100 peer-reviewed articles! My work on individual variation in endocrine plasticity marks the 100th paper produced by the impressive KRSP team. Keep an eye out for this article in Biology Letters or on our lab's publications page
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May 2019: I'm excited to announce the Guindre-Parker lab is moving to Georgia, where we will recruit bright undergraduate and Master's students to help expand our research on the evolution of behavioral and endocrine flexibility. You can find us in Kennesaw State University's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology starting August 2019. Watch this space for more details, coming soon
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May 2019: I had such a fun discussion with students from Los Gatos High School, where these bright minds asked amazing questions about field work, career paths, and the broader impacts of animal biology research. I highly recommend connecting with students like these via Skype a Scientist
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May 2019: I'm thankful for the inspiring community of peers and mentors I joined through the Weaving the Future of Animal Behavior (WFAB) Symposium. If you're at the 2019 Animal Behavior meeting in Chicago this July, be sure to check out the WFAB workshop
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April 2019: New preprint alert! If you are interested in individual variation in endocrine plasticity, check out some of the research I've led as part of the Kluane Red Squirrel Project, available on bioRxiv
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January 2019: I'm thrilled to have been selected to participate in the Weaving the Future of Animal Behavior (WFAB) Program! I can't wait to meet the other participants in Arizona this May during the early career symposium.
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January 2019: Another year, another fantastic SICB meeting! I gave a talk on my recent work on the fitness consequences of endocrine plasticity in Kluane Red Squirrels, as well as a poster on the fitness benefits and physiological costs of social group size in superb starlings. The Dantzer lab was well represented at the meeting in Tampa, and our fearless leader delivered a fantastic Bartholomew Lecture! Go team!
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December 2018: Happy holidays, from one researcher and her superb starlings! I'm excited that the Journal of Experimental Biology featured my research and photo on their holiday card!
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October 2018: Be sure to check out the most recent issue of Integrative and Comparative Biology, which features a great set of articles on the evolution of endocrine systems. My review summarizing what we know on the evolutionary endocrinology of circulating glucocorticoids is included in this issue.
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August 2018: The McAdam lab attended the Joint Evolution Meeting in Montpellier, France where I presented on my NSERC funded post-doctoral work. I'm examining whether glucocorticoid hormone concentrations respond to selection for elevated conspecific density using our decade-long experimental evolution manipulation in the Kluane Red Squirrel system.
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August 2018: Our new paper on the lack of short-term physiological costs of parental and allo-parental care in cooperatively breeding superb starlings was just accepted by the Journal of Experimental Biology. Keep an eye out for the online version on the journal website or under the publications section of my website.
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July 2018: I had the pleasure of heading back up to the Yukon this summer to collect endocrine data from Kluane Red Squirrels. I'm looking forward to performing lab work and uncovering which components of the HPA-axis are the targets of selection in our experimental evolution population. Stay tuned!
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June 2018: My research on superb starlings is featured on this month's cover of Royal Society Open Science. Read more about my dissertation work here, describing how breeders and alloparents adjust their offspring care according to environmental and social conditions.
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May 2018: I have two new articles in press in Oecologia and Integrative and Comparative Biology. Stay tuned to learn more about the oxidative costs of parental care in cooperative vs. non-cooperative breeders, as well as recent advances in the evolutionary endocrinology of circulating glucocorticoid hormones across multiple scales of study.
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March 2018: I had fantastic visits to the Universities of Windsor and Michigan where I delivered departmental seminars on my superb starling research titled "The costs & benefits of cooperative breeding in fluctuating environments". Thank you sincerely to the Mennill, Doucet and Dantzer labs for hosting me!
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February 2018: Our new paper "Multiple benefits of alloparental care in a fluctuating environment" is out in Royal Society Open Science. We explored how offspring care decision rules are adjusted according to rainfall or the social environment in a plural cooperative breeder.
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January 2018: Rebecca Marcus was named a 2018 Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar for her research on the immune costs of breeding in superb starlings. This is one of the most prestigious high school science competitions in the USA, so well done Becca!
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January 2018: I had the pleasure of participating in the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology's 2018 symposium titled Illuminating the Evolution of Endocrine System Variation Through Large-Scale Comparative Analyses in San Francisco. Keep an eye out for the associated articles to be published in Integrative and Comparative Biology.
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December 2017: I completed an awesome Instructional Skills Workshop, facilitated through the University of Guelph's Open Ed program. Highly recommended for new or experienced instructors alike.
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October 2017: Our paper on testosterone, social conflict and parental care in superb starlings was accepted for publication in Hormones & Behavior. Congratulations to Alyx Pikus, the lead author, on publishing her MA thesis!
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September 2017: I had a productive visit to 'squirrel camp' in the Yukon, where I learned all about the Kluane Red Squirrel Project. Thanks to the 2017 fall crew for teaching me to navigate on grid, count cones & capture squirrels!
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June 2017: Becca Marcus was awarded an Acorda Scientific Excellence Award for her research on superb starling immune function. You can listen to Becca's interview about her research here. Great work Becca!
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April 2017: I was awarded a graduate student travel grant to present my dissertation research at the Animal Behavior Society 2017 annual meeting. Thank you for the support ABS!
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April 2017: I was selected to participate in the Animal Behavior Society’s Allee Symposium for best student paper at the 2017 annual meeting in Toronto this June. Come check out my talk on June 14th!
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March 2017: Becca Marcus won 4th place for her presentation at the Westchester Science and Engineering Fair. Becca is a high school student working with me on examining the immune costs of reproduction in cooperatively breeding superb starlings. Congratulations!
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January 2017: I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council to join the Kluane Red Squirrel Project at the University of Guelph next fall.
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October 2016: I’ve been selected as a finalist in the Division of Animal Behavior’s 2017 best student talk competition. Come check out my talk Jan 5th at SICB in New Orleans!
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March 2016: I received a travel award from the International Society for Behavioural Ecology to present my dissertation findings in Exeter this summer
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January 2016: My poster titled “What physiological traits allow tropical birds to cope with environmental changes?” was awarded the Lynn Riddiford Award for best student poster at the 2016 SICB meeting in Portland
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January 2016: I was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant in aid of research to study the impacts of environmental unpredictability on superb starlings and their blood parasites
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October 2015: Our new paper on the oxidative cost of song production in snow buntings is out in Ethology. Check it out here
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July 2015: My research on superb starlings was featured in the Mpala Research Centre newsletter. Follow this link to read about my preliminary findings on the relationship between survival and reproduction
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April 2015: Superb starlings are featured in a PBS Nature documentary. The three part documentary is titled Animal Homes and our study population can be seen in the third episode, focused on Animal Cities
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March 2015: I have been awarded an NSF DDIG with Dustin Rubenstein to fund upcoming field work! We plan to experimentally test how environmental conditions shape the costs of reproduction
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May 2014: Dustin Rubenstein was awarded a grant from the National Geographic Society in order to fund part of my PhD research on how physiology allows tropical birds to cope with environmental uncertainty
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April 2014: I received a grant from the American Ornithologists‘ Union to fund an upcoming project looking at how physiology allows tropical birds to cope with environmental uncertainty
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May 2013: I received a grant from the Animal Behavior Society to fund my upcoming project examining the physiological mechanisms that lead to the cost of reproduction in social birds
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February 2013: My new paper on snow bunting plumage was selected as the editor’s choice in the Journal of Avian Biology
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April 2012: I received an NSERC Post-Graduate Scholarship Award to fund 3 years of my PhD work
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