As you might’ve guessed – we like our seabirds here. Check out all the ways we celebrate seabirds at the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels: Student YouTube Videos We bring to you a new video: Taken from the Skies, by Samanth-Lynn Martinez. This video does not mince words about the damage we are doing to our seabird populations. Share this call […]
World Seabird Day 2024 Read More »
“Social information is predicted to enhance the quality of animals’ migratory decisions in dynamic ecosystems, but the relative benefits of social information in the long-range movements of marine megafauna are unknown. In particular, whether and how migrants use nonlocal information gained through social communication at the large spatial scale of oceanic ecosystems remains unclear. […]” Authors: Stephanie Dodson, William K.
Long-distance communication can enable collective migration in a dynamic seascape Read More »
Authors: Gemma Carroll, Briana Abrahms, Stephanie Brodie & Megan A. Cimino Journal: Nature Ecology and Evolution DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02454-0 “Climate change is driving a rapid redistribution of life on Earth. Variability in the rates, magnitudes and directions of species’ shifts can alter spatial overlap between predators and prey, with the potential to decouple trophic interactions. Although phenological mismatches between predator requirements
Spatial match-mismatch between predators and prey under climate change Read More »
Authors: Elliott L. Hazen, Matthew S. Savoca T.J. Clark-Wolf, Max Czapanskiy, Peter M. Rabinowitz, and Briana AbrahmsJournal: Annual Review of Environment and ResourcesDOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-111522-102317 “Sentinel species, from birds to invertebrates, have been used to provide insights into ecosystem function, as leading indicators of risk to human health and as harbingers of future change, with implications for ecosystem structure and function.
Ecosystem Sentinels as Early-Warning Indicators in the Anthropocene Read More »
Don’t know how to celebrate World Ocean Day this year? We have a few ideas: This year’s World Ocean Day theme this year is “One Ocean. One Climate. One Future.” One of Dee’s BIOL 305 students, Giovanna Esquivel, created this powerful PSA reminding us how our actions impact our world. Whether you’ve never been to the ocean or you go
World Ocean Day 2024 Read More »
Dr. Kasim Rafiq recently presented his work on using animal-worn sensors to understand the impacts of environmental change on African wild dogs and lions at the Washington Research Foundation Symposium, who fund his position at the university. As part of this work, over the past two years, Kasim, Leigh West, and Dr. Briana Abrahms developed and deployed fitness trackers for
Thanks to the generous support of Zoo Augsburg in Germany, Dr. Eric Wagner and Katie Holt were able to return to Punta Tombo for a couple of weeks in April. There, they put twenty satellite tags on penguins—ten females and ten males—that were about to start their post-breeding migration. As of today 18 satellite tags are still transmitting to our
Field updates: Argentina, April 2024 Read More »
The Abrahms Lab is growing! This fall we will have two new grad students join us in the Center: Meredith HonigPenguin Camp Meredith is interested in how species interactions shape ecological communities and wildlife population dynamics, especially in the implications of global climate change on these processes. She received a BS in Wildlife and Conservation Biology from the University of
Welcome Marie-Pier and Meredith! Read More »
Authors: Kasim Rafiq, Neil R. Jordan, J. Weldon McNutt, John Neelo, Nina Attias, Dee Boersma, Meredith S. Palmer, Jennifer Ruesink, and Briana AbrahmsJournal: ScienceDOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado6937 “By refining the academic system to recognize and support different forms of scientific inquiry equally, we can build the diverse research community necessary to empower discovery across disciplines.”
The value of field research in academia Read More »
Since 2015, we have deployed automatic weighbridges to track the foraging success of Magellanic penguins at one of their largest breeding colonies – Punta Tombo, Argentina. These weighbridges weigh penguins noninvasively as they leave the nesting area to forage and when they return to feed their chicks. This helps us track whether these penguins are finding enough food for themselves
Testing Technology with the Woodland Park Zoo Read More »
