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Grad Student Pilots PIT Tagging for Tidal Marsh Sparrows

3/20/2015

 
PictureAdult Seaside Sparrow in NY with a passive integrative transponder (PIT) tag attached to a color band on its left leg.
PhD student Alison Kocek, along with collaborators at the University of Maine, piloted a study in 2014 involving the application of PIT (Passive Integrative Transponder) tags to tidal-marsh sparrows within New York City and southern Maine.  During previous field seasons, multiple recaptures of sparrows (systematically and at nests) throughout the field season led to trap avoidance and possibly increased the risk of nest abandonment by adult sparrows.  To reduce both of these potential problems, Alison chose to attach a PIT tag to a nesting birds’ color band as a novel way to allow researchers to passively identify birds attending a nest.  These tags do not require a power source, are light weight (0.1g), and remain with the birds for their entire lifespan. This reduces potential negative impacts from frequent handling of birds, while allowing researchers to collect more information with less effort than traditional recapture methods.

Alison and fellow researchers applied tags (using epoxy and electrical tape) to the color bands of female saltmarsh sparrows (ME and NY), Nelson’s Sparrows (ME) and hybrids (ME), and male and female seaside sparrows (NY) captured throughout the 2014 field season.  She also banded male seaside sparrows with PIT tags because they are known to occasionally aid in feeding young and are notoriously difficult to capture during targeted netting at nests.  Tags were applied to 88 individuals in New York and 84 in Maine.  Once several individuals were tagged at a study site, researchers began placing RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader antennae next to active nests for 15-minute intervals to determine which individuals were attending nests.  To confirm that RFID readers were only capturing the IDs of the attending adult and not another bird passing by, a subset of these same nests were later targeted for netting.  In all instances where targeted netting resulted in a capture, individuals trapped in nets were the same individuals whose PIT tag ID was recorded by the RFID reader at the nest.  Also, in every instance that an RFID Reader was unable to obtain the PIT tag ID of an individual, target netting determined that the attending individual was not marked with a PIT Tag. Thus, these data demonstrated 100% PIT tag readability and accuracy during the 2014 field season in both New York and Maine.  

Alison plans to continue this work in 2015, and will tag new individuals as well as examine return and retention rates for previously tagged birds. Alison and Dr. Cohen conduct this research as part of the Salt Marsh Habitat and Avian Research Program (SHARP), a collaborative effort among several universities and agencies in the Eastern U.S. SUNY ESF’s portion of the project is funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Hurricane Sandy recovery program. 


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Passive integrative transponder (PIT) tags
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RFID reader used to identify sparrows

Salt Marsh Research Featured in Online News Video 

11/20/2014

 
Graduate student Alison Kocek gave a video interview to Fios1 News about the ecology of Marine Nature Study Area, a salt marsh preserve in Oceanside, Long Island New York.   As part of her Ph.D. research, Alison is studying the response of Saltmarsh Sparrow and Seaside Sparrow habitat and populations to changing habitat and human-related threats.   These birds are critically imperiled, because they are 100% reliant on salt marshes which have declined drastically in extent due to human development and sea level rise.

You can watch Alison's interview here:
http://www.fios1news.com/longisland/node/75761#.VGZU_ih8a25

Alison Kocek Featured on USFWS Blog

5/22/2014

 
PicturePhoto: Margie Brenner/USFWS
Ph.D. student Alison Kocek's research on Saltmarsh and Seaside Sparrows in the greater New York City area was featured in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service article about different projects that are studying how bird communities have been impacted by Hurricane Sandy. She was featured alongside her colleagues at SHARP (Saltmarsh Habitat and Avian Research Project), a multi-agency group of collaborators studying the conservation of tidal marsh birds.  Check out the article here. Nice work Alison! 

Grads win ESF travel awards

2/12/2014

 
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Grad students Alison Kocek and Laurel Nowak-Boyd recently won competitive travel awards from SUNY ESF's Office of Instruction and Graduate Studies to present their work at conferences. Alison received $500 towards attendance at the International Ornithological Congress in Tokyo, Japan in August.  In Japan, she will be presenting results from her work on Saltmarsh and Seaside Sparrows nesting in New York City marshes. Laurel received $300 for the Northeast Fish and Wildlife Conference in Portland, Maine this April, where she will present on her recently completed study of Ring-necked Pheasants in Western New York. Congratulations, ladies! 

Lab members attend Atlantic Coast Piping Plover workshop, win GOLD medal at 1st annual Piping Plover Olympics

2/11/2014

 
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Dr. Cohen and grad students Michelle Stantial, Alison Kocek, Maureen Durkin, and Melissa Althouse attended the 2014 Atlantic Coast Piping Plover and Least Tern Workshop at National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV this month.  Dr. Cohen helped present the results of a structured decision making workshop for Piping Plover nest exclosures that he and Alison participated in this past December. Michelle presented initial results and conclusions from her study on Piping Plover flight behavior on the Atlantic Coast. Her work aims to identify whether proposed wind turbines placed within Piping Plover breeding areas will impact the birds during flight. As wind energy gains popularity, this issue is relevant for site managers across the breeding range, and her presentation was met with much interest. Maureen presented a poster on plover and tern road mortality in Florida. 

The whole lab group competed against eight other teams of piping plover scientists and managers in the 1st annual Piping Plover Olympics, which included trivia, a relay, logic puzzle, and band resighting events. After a tough competition, clinched by Dr. Cohen's rousing dramatic reenactment of a broken wing display, the ESF team took home the gold medal (shell). 

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Lab members participate in structured decision making workshop for Piping Plover management

1/8/2014

 
PictureSource: naturecanadablog.blogspot.com
In December, Dr. Cohen and grad student Alison Kocek participated in a structured decision making workshop at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia focused on the use of nest exclosures for management of the federally-threatened Atlantic Coast piping plover.  Exclosures are a common management technique for preventing predation of eggs, but some predators may use them to trap and kill nesting adults, or may harass adults leading to abandonment of the nest.  The workshop was attended by three ecological modelers from the U.S. Geological Survey and several biologists and wildlife managers from Maine to Maryland.   The participants built a population model for the piping plover, to serve as a basis for understanding the tradeoff in population growth rate between reduced egg predation and increased abandonment and adult mortality due to exclosures.  The workshop team completed a prototype model, identified optimal decisions for exclosure use under different values for the model parameters, and set forth a plan for addressing uncertainties in the model that included presentation of the prototype to a wider audience for review and feedback.    

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