Lab News
August 2015:
BIG News: Chris has moved to Pacific University!
Come visit us in Forest Grove, Oregon.
If you’re a student at Pacific and want to get involved with behavioral research, come talk to me!
June 2015:
Nora and Chris attend the Animal Behavior Society annual meetings in Anchorage. Here’s a picture of Nora’s talk. Other conference highlights included glaciers, whales, otters, and puffins! (and there was some science too). Check out this selfie of Chris together with two of his most important mentors.
April 2015:
New popular science article co-written by Nora and Chris appears in Biosphere Magazine.
October 2014:
Public outreach in the form of stand up comedy: Nora, "the headless bird girl" discusses her work on tits at a Bright Club event, with much laughter, and hopefully, quiet a bit of knowledge exchange too!
Watch the full video of her hilarious set here
June 2014:
Congratulations to Esmeralda Quiros-Guerrera on her CONACYT fellowship. Esme will be starting a PhD with us this autumn focusing on wren duets.
Well done!
New paper on problem solving and song published in Animal Behaviour with colleagues Neeltje Boogert and Kevin Laland.
November 2013: Taxidermy!
Chris and Nora spend two days in Edinburgh constructing raptor mounts with
master taxidermist George Jamieson. Get ready tits, here we come!
more pictures here
October 2013: Duet coordination paper
Our newest paper on happy wren duet coordination was published in Animal Behaviour (see publications for the pdf). Here are links to some of the popular press coverage.
August 2013: New Lab Member
Welcome incoming PhD student, Nora Carlson! Nora has just arrived in St Andrews from the US and she will investigate avian alarm call signal function and learning in Parids for her thesis research.
Jan 2013:
Interested in joining the lab? PhD studentships are potentially available at the University of St Andrews for enthusiastic and motivated young scientists interested in animal communication. Possible projects could investigate alarm signaling in Parids or chorusing in wrens. For more information about these two research projects, follow these links: ALAR wren choruses
If you’re interested in either position, please send me an email describing your research interests and past experiences and we can discuss further. Closing date for applications is 31 January 2013.
Nov 2012:
Our newest paper on happy wren duets was just published online in Biology Letters with associated coverage in the popular media. Here are a couple of the stories.
Summer Research is underway. Three Pacific students are starting to conduct research on avian communication this summer. Welcome to the lab, Passina, Lauren, and Ari!
May 2017:
Nora gets hooded! A big congrats to Nora, who has earned her PhD at St Andrews. Here she is showing off her new threads with collaborator Lauren Guillette.
March 2016:
Congrats to Nora who has published her first academic paper! Its a big one that took a massive amount of work. Check it out in Animal Behaviour this month.
June 2017:
Chris and recent Pacific graduate Emily Geddes attend Animal Behavior Society annual meeting in Toronto. Kudos to Emily for presenting her undergraudate capstone project as a poster!
December 2016:
New paper out in Current Biology in collaboration with Sue Anne Zollinger and Henrik Brumm from the Max Planck Institute. showing that traffic noise affects both production and perception of great tit alarm calls. Among other press, Chris was interviewed on BBC's evening news program the Newsroom.
July 2016:
Chris travels back to the UK to present a paper at the ISBE conference in Exeter.
November 2017:
Lauren wins best poster award at the annual Murdock college science research conference!
July 2017:
Fieldwork under way at Fern Hill Wetlands and in Costa Rica. Check out Lauren's blog about her adventures wrangling wrens on the Osa Peninsula.
January 2018:
Chris is teaching a travel course in the Galapagos and Ecuador.
Darwin's finches and boobies, here I come.
Grant success: Chris and Lauren Chan were awarded a small grant by Clean Water Services to work with invasive bullfrogs.
March 2018:
Nearly 10 years in the making, we've finally published the first paper examining the ontogeny of duetting rules in wrens--congrats to Karla Rivera-Caceres on her newest paper in Royal Society Open Science. Some nice press coverage of her paper, especially this podcast from Scientific American featuring excellent wren imitations by Karla.
March 2018:
Grant Success: thanks to the Murdock Trust, we'll be studying communication in neotropical wrens for the next few years.
April 2018:
Excellent talks given by the three seniors in the lab today at the Pacific Senior Projects Day symposium. Congrats to Passina, Ari, and Lauren!
May 2018:
A big congrats to Passina, who was honored with this year's top graduating senior award by the biology department!
November 2018:
Introducing Dr. Quiros-Guerrero! Esme passed her PhD Viva with flying colors. Here she is celebrating with her external examiner, Nicole Gerberzahn.
A great showing at the annual Murdock College Science Research Conference by Pacific students. Megan presented a great poster and Ali was selected to give the Pacific student podium presentation, kicking off the whole conference.
May 2019:
Congrats to Ali, who both graduated from Pacific and won the Dedication to Research Excellence Award from the biology department. Check out that zebbie artwork--she should win another award for best mortarboard!
July 2019:
Fieldwork in Ecuador! So many wrens (and so much rain...)
January 2020
Exciting new paper out in Nature Communications with amazing collaborators Nora Carlson and Erick Greene. See publications for a link to the paper or check out links to a couple of the press articles to the right.
July 2019
Behaviour 2019 in Chicago. Chris gave a talk on nuthatches and Ali presented a poster on her undergraduate thesis.
Big kudos to Ali for winning honorable mention for the ABS Genesis Award (best undergrad poster)!
November 2019
This week, nine students presented seven posters describing their research findings at the Murdock Undergraduate Science Conference and the Pacific Undergraduate Research Conference. A big congrats to Megan, who won an award for best poster!
You can find our more recent lab news on twitter.
Follow me @CNTempleton
(but don't expect many tweets!)