REU: Avian Polyandry and Lifetime Fitness

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This research will make a major contribution to understanding lifetime reproductive success in birds (LRS). An understanding of LRS is essential for understanding how natural selection alters the nature of birds over evolutionary time. In order to do this work it is essential to establish the precise parentage of offspring. This will be accomplished with a technique that is also used in human parentage determination -- DNA fingerprinting. The proposed work will assess parentage among members of a focal population and integrate these findings with existing calculations of LRS. This work is also of importance to the conservation of shorebirds -- many of which are endangered or threatened. Shorebirds are of increasing concern to conservationists for two reasons: (1) many share common breeding habitat with waterfowl, a group for which there is intense single-purpose management, and (2) shorebird populations are highly vulnerable as the birds migrate to and winter in areas of the world where shoreline habitats are undergoing explosive development. Knowledge of population dynamics and reproductive output, therefore, is essential for the making of wise conservation decisions.