Our intention is to make contributions to various ecological scientific projects via "Prairie Oaks Ecological Station." Now that we are settled, we have started collaborating with other researchers. Here is a list of projects:
Bird banding. Bird banding conducted under our own federal and state permits provides inventory data, supplements work done at the Rouge River Bird Obsevatory, and contributes to some of the specific projects below. See the annual and cumulative list of birds banded here.
- Validating measurements used to calculate size-corrected body mass in birds. University of Southern Mississippi Migratory Bird Research Group. 2015. Contributed data from 580 birds banded at POES.
- Non-native fruit in the diet of resident and migratory birds. Rouge River Bird Observatory and University of Michigan-Dearborn. 2013-ongoing. Urban areas in particular have high densities of non-native plants that bear fruit which is eaten by birds. Many of these plants are invasive species, and are distributed and spread by birds. Their fruits are also considered to be of poor quality, which has implications for the health of birds if they comprise a large portion of bird diets. RRBO has conducted long-term work in this field at their urban study site. POES is contributing further dietary data, as our site contains the non-native species most common in urban areas, but also many more native species. Read more about this project here.
- Avian Predation of Bumblebees, University of Illinois, School of Integrative Biology. 2014. Dr. Sydney Cameron is an expert on bumblebees and their conservation. One of her graduate students sought sample of bird droppings obtained through bird banding in order to examine them for bumblebee DNA to determine which bird species, if any, feed on bumblebees and what species. We contributed 49 samples from 17 bird species. Results were published in a thesis available here.
- Determining migration routes, pace of migration, and wintering areas of Gray Catbirds through use of light-level geolocators. Rouge River Bird Observatory and University of Michigan-Dearborn. 2013. Six catbirds at POES were banded and outfitted with geolocators.
- Wild birds in the ecology of tick-borne disease: predicting vector invasions and pathogen emergence across heterogeneous landscapes. Texas A&M University, University of Illinois. 2013-2014. This study seeks to understand which wild birds are involved in hosting ticks and tick-borne pathogens, and moving them around on the landscape by sampling ticks on migratory birds through bird banding projects. POES signed letters of collaboration for the project. Funding was sought both years by the lead researchers through the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health but not obtained. POES will participate in this project when the grant is funded.
Annually, we contribute bird count data to the Ann Arbor Christmas Bird Count, the Washtenaw County North American Migration Count, and all our bird data is submitted to eBird (nearly 1000 checklists submitted so far).
Other citizen science projects we have contributed data to include:
- Pieris Project. 2016. Submitted several specimens of Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) butterflies for DNA sequencing. This project will look at genetic differences in this extremely abundant and widespread butterfly to examine how a species adapts to environmental changes, especially climate change and agricultural practices. UPDATE 2018: Very interesting results have been posted and are in peer-review for publication.
- Distribution of ambrosia and bark beetles. University of Florida. 2015. Subfamily Scolytinae comprise of many beetles with complex life cycles and include a number of destructive forest pests. This study is looking at the distribution and habitat across much of North America. First samples we collected in May-2015 were identified as native Pityophthorus species. Additional samples were collected in Jul-2015 and are to be identified soon. Read more about this project here.
- Lost Ladybug Project
- Michigan Herp Atlas
- Bumblebee Watch
- Firefly Watch
- MonarchWatch via Monarch butterfly tagging. See our annual updates via the Changes page to see how many Monarchs we tag annually. News: see this blog post about one of tagged Monarchs found in Mexico!
