Arunima Shukla
Linguistics and Psychology
College Park Scholars-Earth, Life & Time Program
For my practicum i worked in the Video room of the Borgia Lab as a bowerbird video assistant. I started in February of 2009 and ended on May 8th. I found this oppurtunity in the Bio-Psyc building where I was taking quite a few classes. During my practicum my site supervisors were the graduate students who work with Dr. Borgia researching bowerbird sexual selection .
My main responsibility was watching the videos(recorded in Australia during the mating season 2008) of specific bowers and coding the relevant mating behaviors. I had to learn to identify the the birds by thier tri color banding, identify behaviors such as elaborate displays by the male, visits and bower sabotage by other males, and when the male sucessfully mated with a female.
Bowerbirds are fascinating creatures.I found the videos to be quite interesting. Before this I knew very little about bowerbirds and this experience has given me rare insight into the complex and unique behaviors of these intriguiging birds. I learned of their preference for blue and yellow decorations, the elaborate displays of males to woo the females, and even got a glimpse of the Australian wildlife in action when animals like pademelons,kangaroos,wonga pigeons etc. strayed near the bowers. The bowerbirds each had unique personalities and display styles. Some bowers were unkempt, while some beautifully decorated (the males spend hours maintaining the bowers). These behaviors often predicted how many females the males sucessfully mated with.Coding these videos had some challenging aspects. Sometimes it was hard to identify the bird because the bands were faded or unclear, and it was difficult to tell the juvenile males from the females(they look similar since they're both green while the adult males are blue). The behaviors were also not easy to identify and sometimes seemed ambiguous. Whenever i had a hard time with these issues I asked my site supervisors to help me.
This experience was unrelated to my majors but I got the oppurtunity to do it. I think its wonderful that students here can help out with research in a topic that interests them but is not necessarily related to their concentrations. Its just great that even a linguistics major can actually help evolutionary biologists and learn so gain such valuable knowledge and insight about that field. I have never been big admirer of birds but watching these vidoes has changed my perception. Looking closely at these brialliant creatures has given me a new understanding of the complexity of avian life.