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Researchers learn new lessons from old butterflies

Julian Resasco — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:45:39 +0000

Researchers learn new lessons from old butterflies Julian Resasco Thu, 03/26/2026 - 08:45

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Asia Kaiser category winner in Science’s 2026 ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ contest

Julian Resasco — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:11:21 +0000

Asia Kaiser category winner in Science’s 2026 ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ contest Julian Resasco Wed, 03/11/2026 - 14:11

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� launches Sloan Scholars program

Julian Resasco — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 13:41:46 +0000

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� launches Sloan Scholars program Julian Resasco Sat, 02/14/2026 - 06:41

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Dr. Nancy Emery recognized as exceptional mentor

Julian Resasco — Tue, 13 May 2025 21:58:08 +0000

Dr. Nancy Emery recognized as exceptional mentor Julian Resasco Tue, 05/13/2025 - 15:58

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Arthropod biodiversity and ecosystem services in community gardens

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 13:46:35 +0000

Arthropod biodiversity and ecosystem services in community gardens Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2024 - 07:46

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Afraid of Cicadas? This Entomologist Wants to Change That.

Anonymous — Wed, 15 May 2024 01:28:18 +0000

Afraid of Cicadas? This Entomologist Wants to Change That. Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/14/2024 - 19:28

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2024 Field Courses at the Mountain Research Station!

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 17:32:01 +0000

2024 Field Courses at the Mountain Research Station! Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/18/2024 - 10:32

[video:https://vimeo.com/904158184?share=copy]

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Tree “Fitbits” Track Urban Growth, Flowering, More

Anonymous — Tue, 17 May 2022 18:03:51 +0000

Tree “Fitbits” Track Urban Growth, Flowering, More Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/17/2022 - 12:03

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� study: trees outfitted with accelerometers could be the future of arborism, agriculture

Low-cost “tree fitbits” can pinpoint the precise timing of tree activities, like spring bloom or autumn leaf change, according to a new ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� study. Researchers outfitted two East Boulder ash trees with high-resolution accelerometers, efficiently tracking how the trees responded to changing seasons. And in the coming years, arborists could efficiently monitor trees by the thousands with this technology—ultimately giving researchers insight into how tree phenology is changing with a warming climate.

“Accelerometers are in cars, smartphones and fitbits—they track movement in real time. When we put them on trees, accelerometers detect vibrations on the trunk as the tree sways in the wind,” said Deidre Jaeger, recently minted CIRES PhD researcher and lead author of the study out this week in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. “That sway corresponds to the tree's mass, which tells us what the tree is doing.”

A tree’s mass all depends on its water uptake throughout the seasons, creating the structural differences that determine how it dances in the wind. In the winter, trees are dry and brittle. “Think of the quick, shaky rattling sound of leafless trees in the dead of winter,” Jaeger said. “Now think of spring: the trees are lush with leaves, full of water, and sway with flexibility.”

A previous accelerometer study was able to detect when trees’ leaf buds opened or when leaves dried and fell off—but Jaeger’s team proved how much more detailed data such tree fitbits can collect. The team picked up the precise moment when white ash trees flowered, catching the subtle change in movement that corresponded to the trees blossoming and pollen release.

AN ACCELEROMETER STRAPPED TO A TREE ON CU BOULDER’S EAST CAMPUS. PHOTO: DEIDRE JAEGER/CIRES

Jaeger and her team outfitted two white ash trees on ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� East Campus in 2018, working with ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� arborist Vince Aquino to strap equipment to the trunk of each tree. “Previous work suggested trees would need to be out in the open to have enough wind to sway, but we found it not only works on trees inside a city—it’s actually an ideal way to track urban tree growth,” said Jaeger.

Satellite-based, remote sensing tracking methods are useful for monitoring greenness changes in forests dominated by a single species, but it’s hard to learn about a tree species within the city because of the high diversity of species contained within each city block, the team says. Time-lapse cameras also aren't ideal: they are expensive and raise privacy concerns in populated areas. And while drone imagery can provide high-resolution imagery, getting permission to do daily or weekly fly-overs would be unsustainable. “Accelerometers are discrete, continuous and unaffected by the action or physical barriers a city environment presents. We get high-res, reliable data.”

“Now that we know accelerometers can determine flowering dates, that could be useful in agriculture, predicting when tree fruit may ripen or knowing when to apply interventions to protect tree buds from extreme weather,” Jaeger said. The technology could also forecast when leaves change color in the fall, measure how much snow sits in forest canopies, or even detect tree damage from bugs.

“Trees are also bioindicators of climate change,” Jaeger said, “So having high-resolution, long-term accelerometer data would help scientists better anticipate how a changing climate will impact tree bloom, tree health and beyond.”

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Can't Find Your Keys? You Need a Chickadee Brain

Anonymous — Fri, 13 May 2022 18:07:06 +0000

Can't Find Your Keys? You Need a Chickadee Brain Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/13/2022 - 12:07

New research finds genetic link for spatial memory in Mountain Chickadees

For the first time, researchers have shown that there is a genetic component underlying the amazing spatial memories of Mountain Chickadees.

These energetic half-ounce birds hide thousands of food items every fall and rely on these hidden stores to get through harsh winters in the mountains of the West. To find these caches, chickadees use highly specialized spatial memory abilities. Although the genetic basis for spatial memory has been shown for humans and other mammals, direct evidence of that connection has never before been identified in birds.

Above: A Mountain Chickadee retrieves a seed from the smart feeders (Vladimir Pravosudov).

These findings were just published in the journal Current Biology. The research is a collaboration among scientists from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University of Oklahoma.

“It’s usually hard to measure traits in wild populations and relate those to natural selection,” says Scott Taylor, an assistant professor at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and the new director of the Mountain Research Station, who is an author on the paper.

“This research expands the kinds of ways we can explore how natural selection operates in nature and then, ultimately, shapes the variation that we’re fascinated by.”

If natural selection (survival of the fittest) is shaping chickadee memory, certain criteria have to be met. There has to be variation in the trait: some chickadees are indeed better than others at re-finding their stores. There has to be a fitness advantage: birds that perform better on a spatial memory task are more likely to survive and produce offspring. Importantly, variation in the trait must have a genetic basis.

"Environment does still matter a lot in terms of shaping behavior, but our work here suggests that genes may create the brain structures, and then experience and learning can build on top of that," explains lead author Carrie Branch at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

To measure chickadee memory, senior author Vladimir Pravosudov and his team at the University of Nevada, Reno, designed arrays of "smart" feeders to measure memory in a population of wild Mountain Chickadees in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

Study area in California's Sierra Nevada mountains (Vladimir Pravosudov)

Each feeder is equipped with radio frequency identification sensors. The 42 birds tested were fitted with leg tags the size of a grain of rice which give off an identifying signal. Each bird was assigned to one of the eight feeders in each array. The feeder sensor reads the bird's ID tag and if it's the matching feeder for that individual, a mechanism opens the door, and the bird gets a seed. The scientists then tracked how many tries it took before the birds consistently went to the correct feeder.

"This is an effective system to test spatial learning and memory in hundreds of wild chickadees in their natural environment," said Pravosudov. "We have previously shown that even very small variations in performance are associated with differences in survival."

To understand the connection between spatial memory and genetic architecture, Taylor and Georgy Semenov, a co-author and postdoctoral researcher in Taylor’s lab, then sequenced Mountain Chickadee genomes.

"We used two methods to link genetic variation with spatial memory in chickadees," said Semenov. "In the traditional genome-wide approach, we compared genetic data across individuals, from those that performed well on the spatial learning and memory task to those that performed poorly. We did the same comparison with a new machine learning algorithm. Both methods showed hundreds of differences associated with spatial memory. Many of the variations in the genomes turned up in areas known to be associated with learning, memory, and neuron development in the brain."

The authors say many questions remain about the influence of spatial memory itself, including what role it may play in the female’s choice of a mate.

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation grant to the University of Nevada, Reno and to the University of Colorado Boulder and by a Rose Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

This release has been adapted with permission from Cornell University.

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Graduate School celebrates faculty with outstanding mentor awards

Anonymous — Fri, 06 May 2022 16:39:07 +0000

Graduate School celebrates faculty with outstanding mentor awards Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/06/2022 - 10:39

The Graduate School is pleased to recognize 18 dedicated faculty members who received this year’s outstanding faculty mentor awards. The nomination materials showcased their many contributions in mentoring graduate students and supporting the mission of graduate education.

We appreciate their service and offer our heartfelt congratulations.

2022 outstanding mentor awardees

Krister Andersson, Political Science
Susan Brown, Linguistics
Carson Bruns, ATLAS Institute & Mechanical Engineering
Amanda Carrico, Environmental Studies
Brianne Cohen, Art and Art History
Noah Fierer, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Joshua Grochow, Computer Science
Jill Heydt-Stevenson, English
Rosi Kaiser, Psychology and Neuroscience
Kai Larsen, Leeds School of Business
Tim Oakes, Geography
Elika Ortega-Guzman, Spanish
Michelle Sauther, Anthropology
Marcos Steuernagel, Theatre and Dance
Matthias Steup, Philosophy
Stephen Voida, Information Science
Ellen Yi-Luen Do, ATLAS Institute & Computer Science
Wilson Smith, Chemical and Biological Engineering

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Researchers learn new lessons from old butterflies

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2024 Field Courses at the Mountain Research Station!

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Tree “Fitbits” Track Urban Growth, Flowering, More

���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ study: trees outfitted with accelerometers could be the future of arborism, agriculture

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Can't Find Your Keys? You Need a Chickadee Brain

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Graduate School celebrates faculty with outstanding mentor awards

2022 outstanding mentor awardees

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� launches Sloan Scholars program

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� study: trees outfitted with accelerometers could be the future of arborism, agriculture