Mentorship
Interested in working with me?
Urbanization and Sexual Signaling
Tamia Tabourne
Undergraduate student, Howard University
How is urbanization affecting hummingbird morphology and coloration?
Tamia participated in the New York University Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP), which was part of an NSF ETAP. She used spectrophotometry to measure coloration in the feathers of Puerto Rican Mangos - a species of hummingbird that has colonized both urban and forested environments in Puerto Rico. We found that urban populations have higher levels of UV reflectance in their tail feathers, and had longer tail feathers overall. Tamia presented this work in a poster at the SURP Undergraduate Research Symposium, and the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS). This work also became her senior capstone project.
Tamia is graduating with a B.S. from Howard University in 2025, and has been accepted into a Ph.D. Program at NC State.
Diet, Microbes, and City Heat
Olivia Weklar
Ph.D. Student, New York University
What is the link between variations in diet, microbiome composition, and thermal tolerance?
Olivia Weklar is a 2nd year Ph.D. student interested in how urbanization affects the gut microbiome of birds. We first started working together on a project led by Jenny Hazelhurst, asking how the gut microbiome of the Anna’s hummingbird, an urban-adapted species in the western U.S., varies across a gradient of urbanization. Olivia will be presenting this work at the upcoming Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Atlanta, GA (2025), and we are currently preparing the manuscript for submission to Integrative and Comparative Biology.
Moving forward, Olivia is now following up my postdoctoral work, asking whether the variation in thermal tolerance I found between urban and forest populations of Puerto Rican Mango might be linked to the microbiome and diet.
Luxury Effects on Biodiversity
I am working with 9 undergraduate students and one M.Sc. student to conduct herp, bird, and insect surveys of across 11 parks in New York City, in a study investigating how socioeconomics affect urban biodiversity.
We have also used this project as an outreach tool. For example, we have conducted surveys with a highschool summer science program called BioBus, WNYC Radio, and even a French documentary team (filming ‘Urbana Animalis’ - hopefully coming soon!). We have also started a collaboration with the NYC Bird Alliance and joined in on some of their public bird walks around New York City.
(Senior, undergrad)
(Junior, undergrad)
Behavior and Thermoregulation
Saimara Alejandro
M.Sc. Student, SUNY Buffalo
The Bogert effect, or behavioral inertia, describes how behavior may enable organisms to reduce the amount of variation in their environment that they experience, thereby relaxing selective pressure on physiological traits. Saimara Alejandro, post-baccalaureate student from the University of Puerto Rico, led a camera trap study this past summer in Puerto Rico to determine whether hummingbirds might be shifting their behavior to avoid extreme temperatures in the city.
Saimara just started a masters degree at SUNY Buffalo in the lab of Marcella Baez, where she will be continuing to build on the dataset we collected, looking into the evolution of speciation and doing an assembly of the Puerto Rican Mango Genome!
Metabolic Adaptation in an invasive insect
Fallon Meng
Ph.D. Student, New York University
The spotted lanternfly is an invasive moth that has been expanding its range rapidly across the Eastern United States, posing an agricultural threat, and is especially common in cities. Ph.D. student Fallon Meng and I are conducting a study to determine whether the metabolic rate of spotted lanternflies might be changing as a mechanism for coping with urban heat, and how this might be facilitating their invasion.
Artificial light at night & circadian rhythms
During my doctorate I studied how light pollution disrupts circadian rhythms in birds. To do this, we occasionally had to stay awake for 24 hours, to get a snapshot of what was going on inside of a bird’s brain at all hours of the night. Spoiler alert - not getting enough sleep stresses birds out, and staying up all night to document it stresses us out too! Thankfully, I had some amazing undergraduate students and we got creative, finding ways to keep ourselves awake and in a good mood, like painting and making silly over-caffeinated videos.
Want to get involved?
Urban fieldwork has many advantages, one of which is accessibility. Sites are usually easy to get to by car or public transportation, and often close by to Universities (if not on campus!). Because of this, I am always open to students at any level to come along, learn what we do, and participate.
If you live in one of the cities below, and are interested in coming out into the field, contact me via email. Come for one day, or many days, and maybe even lead an independent research project alongside my work - there are many unanswered questions in urban ecology waiting to be explored! I am also always looking for folks interested in becoming a field site by volunteering to maintain a hummingbird feeder - so please consider volunteering and/or spreading the word.
Here is a list of the cities I’ll be working in the upcoming year (2025):
Bogotá (Colombia) · Fusagasugá (Colombia) · Gamboa (Panama) · Panama City (Panama) · Seattle (Washington, USA)
