The following is a ZOOM presentation recorded on February 9, 2022.
In this presentation, Rachel will go over the methods and results of her master’s research project, in which she monitored a population of white-throated sparrows in Marquette County over the course of two breeding seasons (2020 and 2021). She worked with a small crew of undergraduate field assistants to determine breeding pairs, map territories, locate nests, and take small blood samples from both adult birds and nestlings in this population. Rachel then used these blood samples to determine the presence of blood-borne diseases (such as avian malaria and West Nile virus) among individuals and analyzed whether adult birds that were infected with these diseases had different reproductive outcomes than birds that were uninfected.