Graduates. The lab lost 3 outstanding seniors last year: Steph Lin graduated early, at the end of Fall 2021, and Taiba Khan and Eadaoin Kelly both graduated at the end of the academic year. Steph and Eadaoin (“A-deen”) presented their research about the effects of investigator disturbance on kittiwake chick growth and physiology (TLDR: They are pretty robust to research activities!), with Steph presenting a poster as a remote attendee at the Pacific Seabird Group meeting in February, and Eadaoin presenting a poster at Bucknell’s Kalman Research Symposium in March. Taiba finished up her time in the lab by organizing and interacting multiple large data sets to create a master data file that will be used for years to come, and testing hypotheses about sex differences in chick behavior (and parental responsiveness to it). We weathered the COVID rollercoaster together and I will miss all of them!
Sierra Pete is writing up her thesis, and was hired by the Institute of Seabird Research and Conservation to serve as the site lead for the second half of the season with this year’s Middleton Island (AK) research team, coordinating the logistics and research for the 8-10 person crew and the dozens of seabird projects happening out there this year. She is doing an outstanding job. Morgan spent ~2 weeks on Middleton with that fantastic crew – her first time there without any field assistants and boy did she feel the loss acutely (Eyuel, Mae, Paige, Eadaoin – I really missed you!).
The lab will be small this coming year, as a sabbatical break is coming, but Alex Le, Ali Jackson and I are looking forward to some productive science.