I am on sabbatical for academic year 2023/2024. Things are relatively quiet in the lab, as I am using this time to catch up on paper writing (trying to resist collecting more data when the existing data need to emerge into the world!). That said, undergraduates Stephanie Walsh (’24), Alex Le (’24) and I are preparing for presentations at the 2024 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (“SICB”) conference in January in Seattle.

{Please note that I am not taking any graduate students for AY 24/25.}

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.

• After COVID shut down Buknell’s campus during Spring Break in March 2020, several research projects were interrupted and, due to safety concerns about travel and medical access on a remote island, our planned Summer 2020 field season on Middleton Island was cancelled.
• Olivia ‘Liv’ George graduated in Spring 2020! We were so sad not to be able to celebrate her in person.
• Bucknell’s campus was open for in person (and hybrid) instruction in Fall 2020; the lab met regularly (masked and following social distancing protocols) and research continued, albeit a bit more slowly than usual.
• Sierra Pete and Taiba Khan learned to use BORIS software and analyzed ~34 hours of kittiwake chick behavior.
• Sierra submitted an abstract for the 2021 virtual SICB conference.
• Steph Lin taught Eadaoin Kelly and Verona Hendricks (our newest lab members) how to do DNA extractions, PCR & gel electrophoresis for genetic sexing of kittiwake chicks, and is currently optimizing RNA extractions.
• Chase Hoehn finished validating and evaluating glucose assays from 2019 kittiwake plasma samples and is learning RNA extraction with Steph; in the Spring they will use real-time qPCR to quantify gene expression in chicken tissues from an experiment involving embryonic exposure to an aromatase inhibitor.
• Paige Caine finished some real-time qPCR assays that were suspended when campus shut down last Spring, and is validating qPCR primers to see if she can get published chicken primers working in some rhinoceros auklet RNA samples, to look at effects on dietary restriction on expression of metabolic genes. 

In addition to ongoing research projects, this year our lab has placed an emphasis on reading and discussing student-selected papers about inequities in STEM. Through the acknowledgement of these injustices we hope to make ourselves and those we interact with more aware of these problems, and make meaningful changes in our current and future professional and personal lives. 

• Katie Edwards and Abby Joseph finished with a strong Spring semester – a Kalman Symposium talk for Katie (she had to give at least one public talk, after presenting her research in poster format at SICB in January!), and a successful honors thesis defense (also a public talk) for Abby. Abby is currently working with lab alum Jeff Simkins (’15) to incorporate her thesis research into a manuscript from his honors thesis research, and submit it for publication.
• Paige Caine is headed off for a summer REU studying ants, while Olivia George is taking classes this summer.
• One of our newest lab members is Masters student Sierra Pete (M.S. ’21), who  jumped in with both feet and has been on Middleton Island in Alaska since May, immersed in learning everything she can about kittiwakes and starting her data collection before she even officially starts at Bucknell!
• In the Fall, we will welcome several additional incoming lab members – Chase Hoehn (’21) and Taiba Khan (’22)

‘Fledging’ Paige (Collins, ’18) and ‘Hatchling’ Paige (Caine, ’21) just before fPaige’s symposium talk! It was well-attended and well-delivered. Nigel Ravida also presented a poster about a gene annotation project from his genomics class at the symposium (but alas, we don’t have any photo-documentation).

• Seniors Mae Lacey, Paige Collins and Nigel Ravida are getting ready to graduate in a few short months. All are looking to continue in biology! Mae will spend the summer working with endangered roseate terns off the coast of CT, and Paige and Nigel are both seeking research positions in labs.
• Mae presented her research on the effects of microclimate on kittiwake reproductive success at SICB in January, opting to give an oral presentation instead of the more traditional (for undergraduates) poster – she delivered a graduate-level talk that made us proud! She’s working on her honors thesis on the same research, which she will defend in April.
• Paige Collins (’18) is preparing a talk for Bucknell’s Kalman symposium where she will present research that the whole lab worked on last year, genetically sexing nearly 70 kittiwake chicks to understand how age, sex and chick status affect growth and survival of chicks exposed to acute reductions in food availability.
• Paige Collins and Nigel Ravida (’18) are both working to extract RNA from whole kittiwake blood, identify focal genes and design qPCR primers to evaluate the effects of acute food shortages on gene expression in adult kittiwakes.
• Paige Caine (’21) is spending spring learning how to run EIAs to quantify hormones and preparing to spend a few weeks on Middleton Island, AK this summer, studying whole free-living kittiwakes instead of just working with samples in the lab!
• Manya Saaraswat (’19) has been neck-deep in video footage of feisty kittiwake chicks, building an ethogram to quantify begging, feeding and aggressive behaviors, in an effort to identify predictors of siblicide.
• Katie Edwards (’19) is making the most of her semester in Scotland, exploring culture, history and science all over Edinburgh, but still planning her summer kittiwake bioinformatics project.
• Abby Joseph (’19) officially joined the lab this Spring, and is also learning how to run EIAs. She’s working on a follow-up experiment to strengthen the data for our developmental fadrozole exposure project.