The Moore lab is looking for field assistants to study wire-tailed manakins in the north-western Amazon Basin at Tiputini Biodiversity Station this winter!

Click here for more information!

After a busy summer monitoring over 130 nest boxes, Jess and her crew are wrapping up their first field season with over 500 birds caught and processed! Other than being attacked by a giant tree swallow, everything has gone well!

(Left to right): Sydney Hope (Phd Student), Jenna Holub (field technician), Jessica Hernandez (PhD Student), Catherine Hucul (field technician)

Congratulations to Jess for being awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Jess is currently preparing to start her first field season working with a local breeding population of Tree Swallows at Virginia Tech’s own Kentland Farm.

Getting to our remote field site in North-Eastern Ecuador requires a plane trip to a small oil-frontier city, a boat down up the Napo River, a truck ride down a oil road, and another final boat ride down the Tiputini River. In total it takes about 10 hours to get to the station from the Quito Airport. Here is a time lapse video showing the final leg of the trip.

https://www.facebook.com/USFQTiputini/videos/10154753927514893/

Virginia Tech students team with Ecuadorean tribes to learn most-effective plants for treating infection

We are currently looking for field assistants for our upcoming field season in Ecuador. See our posting on Ornithology Exchange for more details!

The Moore lab welcomes two new students and Global Change Fellows, Meredith Kelly and Jessica Hernandez!!! Welcome Meredith and Jessica!

Ignacio and Ben just returned from the North American Ornithological Conference. Ben presented a poster on his recent work on wire-tailed manakins while Ignacio gave a poster presentation describing his work on the cloacal micro-biome of Rufous-collared sparrows. Prior to the meeting, Ben and Ignacio also attended the second Manakin Research Coordination Network meeting along with ~40 other researchers studying manakins and/or genomics.

2016 Manakin Research Coordination Network Participants