Assistant Professor of Physiology Jessica Malisch presented “Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now? Predictors of Facultative Altitudinal Migration in Mountain White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys oriantha)” at the Annual Meeting for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, held January 3-7, in Austin,Texas.
Malisch spoke about her current research as well as research spanning decades that she and her colleagues from the University of California, Davis and the University of Montana have collected on a single population of White-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys oriantha) that reside in Tioga Pass Meadow, California (elevation 3,030 m). These sparrows are migratory and typically arrive in early May from their wintering grounds in Mexico. She explained that organisms that inhabit regions with high environmental variability must cope with sudden shifts in climatic conditions to survive and reproduce. In areas with steep elevation gradients, temporary movement from an area of high elevation to low elevation, facultative altitudinal migration (FAM), is a useful adaptation that promotes survival but may come at a cost to reproduction through the loss of territory or abandonment of a nest.
Malisch said the climate conditions and altitudes this population of sparrow are in make it a model population to investigate environmental and physiological variables that influence FAM behavior. She and her colleagues also synthesized recent findings in a framework that includes environmental variables, physiological variables, and return rate in regard to FAM behavior.
During the conference, two SMCM students presented posters of progress on their current St. Mary’s Projects. Ava Chrisler ‘20 presented “Modeling glucocorticoid physiology, glucose mobilization, and return rate in migrating Mountain White-crowned Sparrows,” and Ivy Antunes ‘20 presented “Development of an Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay for Avian Corticosterone Binding Globulin.”
Additionally, SMCM alumna Melanie Kimball ‘19 presented her St. Mary’s Project “Acute Stress Mobilizes Glucose and Free Fatty Acids in Mountain Dark-eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis)“ as a talk at the conference.
