Events at the MPIAB

In my presentation entitled "From Guessing to Knowing: The Beauty of Physiological Measures," I will present data showing the value of physiological measures to monitore life history in bonobos, chimpanzees, and other nonhuman primates. The presentation features the interplay of growth, reproduction, maintenance and mortality and ongoing long-term projects on the ontogeny of bonobos and chimpanzees. It also provides insight into the analytical challenges and the potential of physiological data for detecting health status in zoo-housed and wild apes. Integrating information from multiple physiologic measures, extracted from non-invasively sampled matrices, we can monitor developmental changes throughout life, assess individual immunological responses, and the ability (or inability) to cope with social stressors. My presentation underscores the immense potential that physiological data hold for life history research, health monitoring, and for modeling evolutionary scenarios. [more]

We invite you to join photographer Christian Ziegler, and authors Rachel Page, Dina Dechmann, Teague O’Mara and Marco Tschapka, for a public webinar on Wed Dec 13 at 10am Panamá time. Together, the five of us will discuss our newly published book, BAT ISLAND, taking you on a photographic journey to the rainforests of Barro Colorado Island, Panamá, to meet the 76 species of bats that occupy this small space, and learn about their stunning natural history, physiology, evolution, sensory adaptations, foraging behavior, and social systems. Join us on zoom at http://www.stri.si.edu/batisland [more]

Flying animals are known to modify their movements to benefit from the energy available in the landscape. However, seminal works on the cost of transport (COT) of flying animals largely ignore the effect that physical environment and variation in flight behaviour have on flight costs, identifying flight as the most costly form of locomotion per unit time. The ability to switch from flapping to passive (soaring/gliding) flight, in response to variations in the wind vectors, was assumed to be the province of selected large birds, but modern bio-logging and radar techniques now allow us to accurately estimate the proportion of flapping vs passive flight.In this study, we used a large dataset of high-resolution movement data from 45 species to provide the first assessment of the role of the physical environment in determining COT in the wild. We quantified how changes in the use of flapping flight and variation in the wind vectors contribute to variation in COT, and show how these affect species differently, according to morphology and body mass. This changes the current dogma about the cost of flight relative to other forms of locomotion, demonstrating that flight can be cheaper than swimming and more costly than running, with the difference being driven by the interaction of energy landscape, body mass and wing morphology. [more]

A lot of the stress researchers experience is inherent in the academic system: short-term contracts, limited financial resources, pressure to finish papers and to publish, competing with many other talented people, constant (self-)evaluation and (self-)criticism, high dependency on your supervisor/PI (for better or worse) or the next stage of funding, holding another job on the side, dealing with visa restrictions, you name it, and you already know it. But some of the stress is inherent in our thinking and ways of interacting with co-workers and the system at large.What if there was a way for us to use this portion of the stress as a superpower? A door to our and our colleagues’ needs? What if we learned to understand needs as something beautiful that points us in the direction of better mental health, more caring relationships, and a healthier academic system? What if we could retrain our thinking so that we can also communicate in a way that makes it more likely that we and everyone else gets what we need to make our lives more wonderful?Sounds a bit too woo-woo to be true? Come and find out for yourself. In this talk, I will share experiences and learnings I had as a trainer of Nonviolent Communication (NVC). You will gain a basic understanding of what NVC is and how it might serve you as well. [more]

Since 2005, my research group has been studying ecology and behaviour of purple-crowned fairy-wrens. They are endangered cooperatively breeding birds inhabiting riparian zones in the monsoonal savanna of NW-Australia. We follow individually marked birds throughout life to establish their movements, breeding attempts, lifespan, and lifetime reproduction. Here, I will present some results on how these birds deal with their unpredictable climatic conditions and the threats in their environment. I will explain how we used telomeres, DNA caps that protect chromosomes and act as a biomarker of fitness, to identify threats from climate change in young birds. I will discuss potential implications for population persistence, as well as current and future research directions. [more]

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The extent of the global human footprint limits our understanding of what are natural baselines in the marine environment. Remote near-pristine areas provide some baseline expectations for biomass and suggest that predators can be more abundant than expected. Coral reefs are generally considered from the angle of corals and their associated reef fish communities, but reef sharks have received relatively less attention. I will bring you on a journey to one of the largest aggregations of reef sharks to explore their secret lives. The southern pass of Fakarava atoll – a Biosphere Reserve in French Polynesia – hosts more than 900 reef sharks. This huge biomass of predators makes the trophic pyramid locally inverted. Based on advantageous characteristics of the channel, sharks rely on home food delivery to overcome their hunger. Recurrent fish spawning aggregations and other subsidies represent external energy which frequently feeds this locally inverted trophic pyramid. These generalist predators feed on more than 40 prey species and developed collective hunting strategies to improve foraging efficiency leaving little chance for prey to escape. Using cutting-edge technologies, this research opens a new window on the natural shark behaviour, feeding ecology and social behaviour in a unique healthy reef to better understand the role of sharks on the local ecosystem and how such concentrations of predators are maintained. [more]

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