FLYING THE COOP

Noisy birds hold clues to humanity for Kennesaw State researcher

By Kennesaw State University

July 12^th, 2021

Aside from the rush of traffic from Interstate 75, European starlings could think they’ve found a nice spot in the country as they build their nests around Kennesaw State University’s Field Station on Hickory Grove Road.

Nearby, KSU assistant professor of biology Sarah Guindre-Parker strolls up to one of the 100 or so nest boxes she built for her research on the starlings’ physiology and behavior, hoping to find signs of life—eggs, nesting materials and maybe an adult bird incubating the eggs. She sets up a ladder, climbs the two steps, lifts the lid to the nest box and peers inside.

As it happens, one of the nest boxes has four eggs—warmed from a parent’s recent incubation. She and two graduate students will spend most of the morning weighing and measuring the eggs, recording those measurements and, over time, tracking the growth of the chicks.

A little more than two weeks later, the researchers will have nestlings. A week after hatching, they look like dinosaurs with thin hair, eyes barely open, beaks wide open and noisy for feeding. This is the sweet spot for Denyelle Kilgour, a graduate student in the lab, who is studying urban ecology in birds.

“I think the most interesting part of any field work is working with the babies,” she said. “They’re so cool. I love anything having to do with parental care, breeding and reproduction, and the behaviors that go with that.”

Another week passes and the researchers have fluffy fledglings to measure. With much thicker feathers and bolder personalities, they’ve started to spread their wings a little bit, thinking about flying. The adults spend a little less time in the nest to prepare their young for the real world.

Located in KSU’s College of Science and Mathematics, Guindre-Parker’s lab studies starlings, an adaptable and common bird, to determine how they survive so successfully in various environments. From an original population of 60-100 starlings exported from Europe and released in New York City in the 1800s, starlings in North America number well over 200 million today, giving Guindre-Parker and her team of researchers ample opportunities to study them.

The Field Station lies in the middle of what ecologists call an ecotone—an area that reflects a transition between multiple kinds of environments—thanks to its proximity to forests and fields on the opposite side of Hickory Grove Road and the highway that borders the land to the south and west. Guindre-Parker also has field sites out in the country in Bartow County, and in the heart of the city. Starlings breed happily across these very different habitats; she said she even found starlings nesting in the light stanchions that illuminate Fifth Third Bank Stadium.

All these sites attract the birds for the same reasons as some humans prefer the country while others prefer the city. Some birds’ personalities are better suited for city life whereas others thrive in the country. Guindre-Parker’s research has already found that urban birds are more bold than rural ones, though researchers don’t yet know how bird personalities are shaped. In the future, Guindre-Parker aims to understand whether urban habitats cause the evolution of these bird personalities.

In addition to observing the starlings in their habitats, the Guindre-Parker lab will investigate the birds on a physiological level because physiology can commonly influence personality too. Kilgour says she has gained lab experience since joining Guindre-Parker’s team, which will lead to further studies of the internal workings of the starlings’ adaptability to city life.

“I’ve gotten to include a whole bunch of new experiences in my research,” she says. “I’m incorporating a genetic component as well as hormone analyses, which I’ve never done before, and so that’s a super-valuable skillset I can take with me anywhere.”

“I think our work is really important to help people understand the effects humans have on wildlife. By doing this kind of research in urban and rural environments we can really see the impacts that we’re making. This work will make a difference.”

– Courtney Linkous, graduate student researcher

Courtney Linkous just finished her first year in the Guindre-Parker lab and her first year in the Master of Science in Integrated Biology program; Kilgour is also pursuing her MSIB. Like Kilgour, Linkous earned her bachelor’s degree in conservation biology and performed most of her research in the field. That has changed since arriving at KSU.

“Previously I haven’t done a lot of lab work, so with this research I get to do a lot of lab stuff,” she says. “I’ll be looking at oxidative stress, which we need blood plasma for, and I get to do some feeding platform trials, which means we’ll get to analyze videos later on, so that’ll be interesting.”

Within 5 weeks of finding eggs at the site, the nest boxes are empty, save for the twigs and leaves. Guindre-Parker says starling parents generally raise two sets of chicks each breeding season, not necessarily in the same nest box as the season’s first chicks, so her team will continue to monitor the nest boxes as spring turns to summer.

After the birds have flown the coop, Guindre-Parker and her research team will head to the lab to analyze the blood and feather samples they’ve collected in hopes of adding to the knowledge surrounding how wildlife cope with urbanization. Ultimately, she says she hopes her research can offer solutions to the puzzle of how animals come to cope with stressful environments more generally, not just urban disturbances.

Kilgour and Linkous agree, pointing toward how human-driven changes to the environment can really change things for animals.

“I think our work is really important to help people understand the effects humans have on wildlife,” Linkous said. “By doing this kind of research in urban and rural environments we can really see the impacts that we’re making. This work will make a difference.”