Audubon and The Wildlife Society highlight our research on bird-fruit interactions!

By Amanda S. Gallinat and Richard B. Primack

“Do not think that the fruits of New England are mean and insignificant, while those of some foreign land are noble and memorable… Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple.” 

-Henry David Thoreau in his Journal

With climate change, many birds migrate later while the fruits they eat ripen earlier. The spread of late-fruiting invasive plants means birds are more likely to encounter abundant invasive fruits during migration. To see what birds eat in autumn, we identified seeds from fecal samples of birds caught at Manomet, a bird banding station. As we report in Biological Conservation (here), birds prefer native fruits even when they are in short supply compared to invasive fruits.

Recently, this research, co-authored with Trevor Lloyd-Evans, was featured by both Audubon (here) and The Wildlife Society (here)! Both articles highlight birds’ strong preferences for native fruits and the conservation importance of planting and maintaining late-fruiting native plants.

Audubon reaches a wide audience of ornithologists, birders, and nature enthusiasts, while The Wildlife Society’s audience includes students, researchers, and practitioners of conservation and wildlife biology. We are delighted for our research to reach these new audiences!

Protecting scientific diversity

By Richard B. Primack

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” 

-Henry David Thoreau in Walden

In a recent paper in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we argue that the scientific leadership needs to include diversity, equity, and inclusion as an important focus in all COVID-19-related recovery efforts. Decades of efforts to build an inclusive scientific community have raised awareness of the need to promote diversity in academic workplaces, but this goal is far from being achieved and is put at risk by the pandemic. 

Communities historically underrepresented in the fields of conservation, ecology, and environmental sciences, including minorities of all genders, women, researchers from the Global South, and people with disabilities, are especially vulnerable during these times. We also need to actively support the retention and diversity of early-career scientists during and after COVID-19.

Fig. 1 | We highlight key actions in the workplace, community, and policy arena that academic leadership can carry out to protect and improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific workplace during and after the current pandemic crisis.  Credit: Rejane Santos-Silva @rejsantossilva

Ecological mismatches of wildflower and trees: Mercer Award presentation

By Richard B. Primack

As described on our April 21 post, Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie and I received the George Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America for excellence in a recent research paper lead by a young scientist. Because the meeting is being held on-line this year, the team was asked to contribute a video for the ESA presentation.  Our video is available on youtube! 

We shared the award with three co-authors for the paper, entitled “Phenological mismatch with trees reduces wildflower carbon budgets,”  which appeared in the scientific journal Ecology Letters.

Sketches of the five co-authors as they appeared in the video.  

By Bonnie McGill. https://bonniem.weebly.com