My name is Lauren Puleo and I am a rising senior at the University of Central Florida where I am majoring in Biology. Here at UCF is where I became captivated with all things birds and realized that I wanted to marry my love of ecology with my avian interests. In 2019 I joined the Wild Symbioses Lab and under the advisement of Dr. Anna M. Forsman, I have developed my own independent data analysis project to better understand how the Gray catbird may be responding to environmental change. I also recently partook in setting up 144 artificial gourds on the UCF campus as part of the Wild Symbioses Lab’s Purple Martin Project. I will be helping monitor purple martin colonies alongside my lab mates to test if purple martins prefer gourds with pre-existing nesting material (pine straw) and if purple martins prefer poles with a higher or lower density of gourds. I was one of the founding members of the Knighthawk Audubon Campus Chapter a registered student organization at UCF, where I started as publicity chair and currently reside as president. I also volunteer at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey a rehabilitation center for raptors and the Wekiva Basin Bird Banding Station at Lake Lotus Park. I previously assisted a UCF graduate student by dissecting and collecting research grade tissue samples from deceased raptors for her thesis on heavy metal contamination in birds of prey in Florida. After graduating with a B.S. in Biology I will pursue a master’s degree, so that I may further explore my current research interests: avian ecology, behavioral ecology, migratory phenology, migratory connectivity, the phenology mismatch hypothesis, conservation biology and global change biology. In my free time, I enjoy trying new recipes, going outdoors, traveling, and of course birding!
Migratory Phenology of Gray catbirds (Dumetella carolinensis)
The Gray catbird is a Nearctic-Neotropical migrant that can be seen and heard (cat-like mews!) every fall, as they migrate to Florida in hopes of finding better resources and warmer temperatures. Gray catbirds are unique because of evidence that suggests they have population-specific migratory strategies. Gray catbirds breed throughout the eastern and central United States and the southern portions of Canada during spring. The geographic area in which they breed heavily influences where they will spend the winter, causing a divide between birds that breed in the east vs. west. Catbirds that breed in the east primarily winter in Florida and Cuba, while catbirds from the west winter in Mexico and Central America. Passerines like the catbird are altering their phenology in response to global environmental change such as climate change. Warming temperatures are causing advancements in plant and insect spring phenophases which may be why phenological shifts in migratory birds are evident. While these shifts may be beneficial in off-setting climate change effects, migratory birds remain vulnerable to our rapidly changing world.
The goal of my project is to elucidate the effects of climate change on gray catbird migratory behavior and body-fitness. To do this I am analyzing 10 years of community-based science bird banding data (n=333) collected at Lake Lotus park in Altamonte Springs, Florida. To interpret possible phenological changes, I am collaborating with Dr. Robert Fitak to incorporate novel applications of circular statistics. Potential further research may include comparing eastern and western populations to determine variations in vulnerability due to differential migratory strategy.
My name is Lauren Puleo and I am a rising senior at the university of central Florida. I am particularly interested in how climate change is affecting the phenology of migratory birds.
For this project, we are analyzing an existing citizen-science data set to identify changes in the mean date of capture for gray catbirds as well as investigate how gray catbirds may be adjusting to environmental change.
In order to determine phenological change, I am using circular statistics. Circular statistics is a developing field that has been used to analyze phenology of plant systems but has not yet been used to investigate the phenology of migratory birds.
To do this, we divided the data into subsets of spring and fall and then into two time periods. The first time period consists of date collected from 2009 to 2013 and the second time period consists of data collected from 2014 to 2018. We then converted the dates of capture into degrees on the circle to identify the mean angles of each time period.
As seen in (figure 1.), on average the mean date of capture in spring was significantly earlier during the second time period when compared to the first time period.
No significant change in date of capture was observed during fall between the two time periods.
We are also interested in identifying any changes in gray catbird body condition. As seen in (figure 3.) we performed multiple spearman correlations and found that on average the mass of birds captured significantly decreased over time in the spring seasons while fall showed no significant changes in body condition.
Lastly we performed a circular-linear regression to predict capture date based on daily average temperature for spring captures across all years. The model indicated that the date of capture for spring occurred around 3 days earlier as temperature increased by one degree.
Significant changes in spring phenology but not in the fall corroborate published trends but whether or not these changes are helping migratory birds to adjust to our ever changing world is unknown.
Strong selection for changes in the spring may be driving birds to depart from their wintering grounds earlier. Arriving early to the breeding grounds may be advantageous but may be leaving migratory birds with insufficient time for pre-migratory fattening.
In the future I would love to expand my research by comparing phenological changes of gray catbirds in different populations to investigate possible variations in vulnerabilities due to population specific migratory strategy.
prey in Florida. After graduating with a B.S. in Biology I will pursue a master’s degree, so that I may further explore my current research interests: avian ecology, behavioral ecology, migratory phenology, migratory connectivity, the phenology mismatch hypothesis, conservation biology and global change biology. In my free time, I enjoy trying new recipes, going outdoors, traveling, and of course birding!
The Gray catbird is a Nearctic-Neotropical migrant that can be seen and heard (cat-like mews!) every fall, as they migrate to Florida in hopes of finding better resources and warmer temperatures. Gray catbirds are unique because of evidence that suggests they have population-specific migratory strategies. Gray catbirds breed throughout the eastern and central United States and the southern portions of Canada during spring. The geographic area in which they breed heavily influences where they will spend the winter, causing a divide between birds that breed in the east vs. west. Catbirds that breed in the east primarily winter in Florida and Cuba, while catbirds from the west winter in Mexico and Central America. Passerines like the catbird are altering their phenology in response to global environmental change such as climate change. Warming temperatures are causing advancements in plant and insect spring phenophases which may be why phenological shifts in migratory birds are evident. While these shifts may be beneficial in off-setting climate change effects, migratory birds remain vulnerable to our rapidly changing world.
incorporate novel applications of circular statistics. Potential further research may include comparing eastern and western populations to determine variations in vulnerability due to differential migratory strategy.