CLICK HERE TO READ ON IGB WEBSITE Animals often use vocalizations to warn of nearby danger to others. While this information is generally intended for members of the same species, other species can eavesdrop on the warnings to use the information for their own benefit. Sentinels are animals that have warning calls so widely understood by others that those other species will form groups with them, relying on the sentinels to provide warnings for danger. For example, the family Paridae, which are a group of birds that consist of chickadees, tits, and titmice, are known as sentinels because their alarm call for danger, which fittingly sounds like “chick-a-dee-dee-dee,” is understood by most other bird species in their mixed-species flocks. “Many animals form mixed-species groups, and the thought is that this is an anti-predator behavior,” said Henry Pollock, Executive Director of the Southern Plains Land Trust. “There is safety in numbers, and there is a benefit to surrounding yourself with a more diverse set of eyes and ears. However, you have to be able to understand the information that the others around you give to make use of it.”
Sentinel calls are so readily understood as a signal for danger that researchers wondered whether species that have never heard the call would still get the message. After a recent study found that birds in the Neotropics were responsive to unfamiliar chickadee alarm calls from North America, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign wanted to expand on this. The team sought to test if bird communities across three different continents could understand calls for danger from a sentinel they had never encountered before – the dusky-throated antshrike. Antshrikes are birds widely distributed across Central and South America that often act as sentinels in their mixed-species flocks. The study was spearheaded by Pollock and Jonah Dominguez, a graduate student in the Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation, who conducted the experiments along with researchers in the lab of Mark Hauber (GNDP), a former professor of ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and collaborators from Serbia and China. The researchers presented playbacks of warning calls of the dusky-throated antshrike, along with warning calls of a local Paridae sentinel and controls, to flocks of wintering birds in North America, Europe, and Asia, and measured their behavioral responses. The researchers predicted that birds on each continent would respond most strongly to the playback of their local sentinel since they were already familiar with the calls. However, the team was surprised to find that flocks were also highly responsive to the unfamiliar antshrike’s warning calls. “We expected to see some kind of response to the novel antshrike’s calls, but predicted that birds wouldn’t respond as strongly to it as their own local sentinel’s calls,” said Dominguez. “However, we were surprised to find no statistical difference in how birds responded to the local versus foreign sentinel’s alarm call. Birds were responding to the unfamiliar antshrike’s call as if it was a bird they’ve known their whole lives.” Flocks of birds across all three continents responded equally as strongly to the unfamiliar antshrike’s warning calls as they did to familiar, local sentinel’s warning calls. The researchers say this finding suggests there is something to sentinel calls that makes them so universally recognizable. For messages that contain important information, such as a warning call for danger, evolution likely converges on similar sounding calls that help get across the message as quickly as possible, according to the researchers. “It’s possible that these calls are more readily recognized across species because they have a central theme – essentially something about them that is unique and conserved despite millions of years in evolutionary history,” explained Dominguez. “There is research in other animals on specific amplitudes and frequencies of sound that cause innate responses, even in animals that are unfamiliar with those sounds. Our study can help researchers figure out what those acoustic elements might be for birds.” “What’s amazing is that our findings are consistent across three different continents with completely different bird communities, which suggests there is some signal encoded within these sentinel alarm calls that cause birds to respond to them, independent of previous experience with that signaler,” explained Pollock. “This really highlights that signal recognition is not always something that has to be learned through environmental experience.” The team says the study opens the door to many future research directions to take. Testing birds with the calls of other sentinels and getting more granular in terms of the behavioral responses recorded are potential next steps, according to the researchers. Dominguez also plans to try to standardize what is categorized as a sentinel species across the literature, since it is currently not well established. “Sentinel species are not very well defined, as the term is used nebulously for any animals that engage in mixed-species foraging and signaling,” said Dominguez. “There’s lots of birds that we don’t typically think of as sentinels being classified as them in the literature, and others that probably are sentinels that are being overlooked. I want to figure out if there’s a common thread between them, and whether the term should be used on the species level or more on a flock level.” The study, which is published in Biology Letters, was funded by NSF, Illinois, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technological Development of Serbia, and the Basic Scientific Research Projects of Liaoning Provincial Department of Education grant. The paper can be found at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2023.0332
0 Comments
CLICK HERE TO READ ON IGB WEBSITE Did you ever collect something from nature as a kid, preserving it to recall cherished memories later in time? Capturing the beauty and wonder of the natural world through foraged finds is the mission of Cris Hughes (GSP), a local artist and Clinical Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Hughes’ art showcases 3D botanical compositions created from dried specimens of plants and insects foraged from nature. Using traditional pinning display techniques to arrange the specimens, she creates intricate and detailed collages, which she refers to as “natural portraits,” as part of her Secret Gardens CU art collection. “When foraging, you really have to take your time and pay attention to what’s around you,” said Hughes. “I've seen how natural it is for kids to spot small things, and how unnatural it seems to be for adults to take the time to do such. In my art I try to encourage people to focus on the little things. People will often look at it, see some tiny details, then come back and look at it again to find more. I try to invoke that childlike sense of wonder and close attention to the world around you.”
Throughout the years, Hughes has consistently incorporated a collaborative element into her art, as the specimens featured in her works are often donated by individuals from various locations. This summer, she took this collaborative aspect of her art to a new level by conceiving a project that required a community-wide effort. Hughes, in collaboration with Julia Pollack, IGB’s Creative Program Manager and curator of the Art of Science program, and Wendy Dorman, a graduate student in the department of natural resources and environmental sciences, envisioned the project “Capturing CU in a Collaborative Collage: A Natural Portrait from Foraged Finds.” The project aimed to foster community involvement and appreciation for local flora and fauna through the creation of a massive collage composed of donated foraged objects from all around Champaign-Urbana. Their proposal received the Urbana Arts and Culture Program grant for 2023. This summer, Champaign-Urbana community members were encouraged to collect natural objects from their backyards, gardens, personal collections, or during foraging events organized by the local parks district and contribute them to the project. Over 100 species of flora and fauna were donated, including flowers, plants, insects, mushrooms, and more. Hughes says that the diversity of donated items highlights how everyone appreciates nature in their unique way. “I remember when we did the Farmer’s Market drop-offs, that I would leave out everything people had donated so everyone could see the diversity of items,” said Hughes. “And someone came up and asked ‘did somebody seriously donate a fly?’, and if I was actually planning on including it in my art. I think it’s amazing that somebody in the community connected with this insect that to someone else is totally polarizing. This piece mashes together people’s preferences and emphasizes how we all appreciate different things in nature, and I think that's a really beautiful thing.” The massive collage, titled “Reflection”, was unveiled on September 23rd as part of an art show at the Anita Purves Nature Center. The piece stands over 3 feet tall, and required nearly 50 hours to construct. Everything within the collage was collected during the summer of 2023 to capture that specific moment in time, save for a single butterfly from a special collection donated to Hughes by local residents a few years earlier. “From afar, the piece appears as this striking floral arrangement, but as you get closer you realize how breathtaking the detail of it is,” Pollack remarked. “You notice a bee perched on a flower, eggshells with insects crawling around them, a cicada hiding behind a flower stem. The more you look the more you discover. It’s a beautiful and mysterious experience that everyone should go see.” As part of the exhibit, visitors can engage with a ‘StoryMap’ that accompanies the piece. Dorman created the map using ArcGIS, highlighting 46 locations where some of the foraged specimens in ‘Reflection’ were found, along with stories from those who found them. “‘Reflection’ brings all of these amazing little intricate details together into a single statement, and then the StoryMap explodes it back into its pieces, highlighting the individual stories of the people that contributed to it,” explained Dorman. “The StoryMap emphasizes how the Urbana-Champaign community is profoundly connected to and cares a lot about the natural beauty around us. It’s a snapshot of a moment in this relationship between humans and nature, and I think that relationship runs deep.” The art exhibit also features selected Art of Science images of seeds and leaves created by Pollack. The Art of Science is an IGB program that seeks to merge science and art. Pollack, who has served as the Art of Science curator since 2018, collaborates with researchers at the IGB to enhance their microscopic images and highlight the beauty and significance of their scientific work. Additionally, microscopic images of flowers, pollen, and beetles taken by the 2023 Pollen Power middle-school campers are on display at the nature center. Pollen Power is a weeklong summer camp hosted by the IGB, aimed at introducing middle schoolers to plant biology while providing strong female mentorship, especially to underrepresented groups in STEM. As a final tribute to the communal nature of the piece, every visitor to the opening ceremony was entered into a raffle to select one lucky winner who would take home ‘Reflection’ after its debut at the nature center. ‘Reflection,’ along with the StoryMap, works from the Art of Science, and images from the Pollen Power campers, are on display at the Anita Purves Nature Center. CLICK HERE TO READ ON IGB WEBSITE
Women have made significant contributions in STEM, and have become increasingly prevalent in the STEM community. However, their online visibility, particularly regarding their accomplishments and contributions to science, remains disproportionately low due to factors such as inherent bias. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, and the 5th most visited website in the world. In recent years it has emerged as a powerhouse of trusted information, largely due to the collaborative nature behind article creation and management on the platform. However, less than 20% of Wikipedia’s pages feature women. To address this disparity, Wikipedia edit-a-thon events have gained traction in universities across the world. These events provide scheduled times for groups to come together and create or edit Wikipedia pages for women and other underrepresented groups. This fall, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology hosted the first event in a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons, with the inaugural event taking place last week. This initiative is spearheaded by the IGB DEI Task Force, a group dedicated to creating new programs and initiatives meant to increase dialogues and create change internally towards a more inclusive environment. Julia Pollack, former Co-chair of the DEITF, says the idea came about during a discussion with fellow DEITF members Ananya Sen, Claudia Lutz, and Erin Louer. The group was inspired by the story of Jess Wade, a British physicist at Imperial College in London, who has written more than 1800 Wikipedia pages for female and minority scientists underrepresented on the platform. Wanting to build upon Wade’s efforts, the group decided to host their own edit-a-thon series at the IGB. “Learning about Jess’ work got us so pumped, seeing how she is directly impacting the representation of women online through her creation of Wikipedia pages,” Pollack recalled. “When Ananya reached out to her, Jess was so inspiring and kind, and took the time to meet with us, answer our questions, and really help direct our vision for this edit-a-thon.” The first event in the series featured a seminar by guest speaker Mackenzie Lemieux, a fourth-year medical student at the Washington University School of Medicine. Lemieux, who has authored over 100 Wikipedia biographies of women in STEM, has led numerous workshops across the country on how to effectively write and edit women’s pages on Wikipedia. She also conducts research exploring gender and racial bias on the platform. “Wikipedia is a really unique and awesome website that’s volunteer driven, and provides knowledge for free to anyone with access to the internet,” said Lemieux. “Teaching people how to create and edit for Wikipedia removes the black box, and puts the opportunity to contribute to our worldwide database of knowledge into people’s hands.” Lemieux discussed the current issues of bias not only on Wikipedia but in STEM in general. Gender biases manifest at a remarkably young age. Studies have shown that when children are asked to draw a scientist, they typically draw an older, white male figure. However, when children are exposed to a counter-stereotypic environment, such as a diverse lab of researchers from various backgrounds, their drawings became more representative. This highlights the importance of representation, which extends to online platforms. “There are so many women that are incredible scientists, and their contributions are very important to STEM history, yet their accomplishments can easily be lost due to bias,” said Lemieux. “Wikipedia has the power to improve women's visibility in STEM, and rewrite history so that its accurate about women's contributions.” During her seminar, Lemieux delved into the reasons behind why the number of women’s pages on Wikipedia is lacking. First, Wikipedia moderators, who decide which articles to retain or delete, are predominantly white, male, and from North America and Europe, leading to inherent bias in determining notability. Second, notability criteria on Wikipedia are highly subjective, with the main rule being the need for a substantial number of independent online sources to confirm a person's contributions. The work of women and people of color is less likely to be featured online, compounding the issue, according to Lemieux. Efforts by groups like Women in Red, who advocate for women's pages, and edit-a-thon events, which mobilize people to create pages for deserving women, have contributed to increasing the number of pages dedicated to women on Wikipedia. The DEITF hopes the IGB Wikipedia edit-a-thon event series will contribute to the improvement of women’s visibility online. “The more you write, the more you see the tangible impact of your pages ─ the number of views, the amount of people building upon and improving your pages,” said Lemieux. “It’s so inspiring because you think about how that page didn’t exist before you wrote it, and now people are reading and referencing it every day.” The edit-a-thon series will span multiple sessions in the coming months, providing participants with ample opportunities to collaborate and create new pages. Librarians from the ACES FUNK library will be on hand to assist newcomers in creating Wikipedia pages, and provide suggestions for women to write about. “There will be people at these events to assist with the process, and if you can’t make it to the edit-a-thon, there’s a lot of online tools to teach people how to edit for Wikipedia,” explained Lemieux. “The first step is just making an account. I know it can be intimidating to write a page that could be seen by everyone worldwide, but that visibility is what makes writing these pages so important.” The next guest speaker in the series will be Jamie Flood, a master's student in Library and Information Science. Register for the remaining Wikipedia edit-a-thon events at go.igb.illinois.edu/Wikipedia |