LTREB: Long term studies of social behavior in a colonial bird

这个奖项是对内布拉斯加州西南部群居筑巢的崖燕的社会行为进行了30年研究的延续。每年的生存和群体选择将通过重新捕获不同筑巢群的鸟类，对超过20万只单独标记的鸟类进行样本研究。收集到的数据将研究筑巢群体的大小如何影响崖燕的年存活率，以及个体是否每年使用相同大小的群体。这项研究还将确定为什么大多数季节性繁殖鸟类的筑巢成功率在夏季随着时间的推移而下降。用杀虫剂对崖燕种群进行实验性处理，创造了条件，刺激一些鸟类在夏季比通常看到的晚得多地筑巢，并提供了比较在夏季早期和晚期饲养的鸟类第一年存活率的机会。包括人类在内的许多动物都生活在不同大小的群体中，这项研究解决了一些基本问题：是什么因素创造和维持了群体规模的多样性；对燕子的发现可能适用于其他群居物种。本科生将大量参与其中，其中许多是女性、少数民族和其他在研究中未被充分代表的群体。这项工作将与保护有关，因为了解种群选择和物种生存概率的年度变化，如悬崖燕子，可以帮助建立管理指南，为类似的迁徙物种，正在减少。

This award continues a 30-year study of social behavior of colonially nesting cliff swallows in southwestern Nebraska. Annual survival and colony choice will be studied for a sample of over 200,000 individually marked birds by re-catching birds at different nesting colonies. The data gathered will examine how size of a nesting colony affects annual survival of cliff swallows and whether individuals use the same size colony each year. The research will also determine why nesting success in most seasonally breeding birds declines with time during the summer. Experimental treatment of cliff swallow colonies with insecticide creates conditions that stimulate some birds to nest much later in the summer than typically seen and will provide the opportunity to compare first-year survival of birds raised both early and late in the season. Many kinds of animals live in groups of different sizes, including humans, and this research addresses fundamental questions about what factors create and maintain diversity in group sizes; what is discovered for swallows may apply to other species that live in social groups. Undergraduate students will be heavily involved, many of whom are women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups in research. This work will be relevant for conservation, because understanding colony choice and annual variation in survival probabilities of species such as cliff swallows could help in establishing management guidelines for similar migratory species that are declining.