News
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Tony gets Graduate Supervisor Award
October 2019 Tony received the 2019 Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision at today's ceremony (here with the Dean of Grad Studies). Thanks to all graduate students, past and present, for making this the most fun part of my job! |
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Why don't (some) birds get fat?
October 2019 NSERC USRA student Liam Krider represented the Williams' Lab at yesterday's SFU undergraduate student poster competition, presenting his work on trying to make zebra finches fat (with fatty food) or thin (scaring them with an owl). |
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A busy two days in the Tox lab
May 2019 Studying the effects of diluted bitumen on embryo development in rhinoceros auklets and double-crested cormorants. With Mason, Leah, Lara and Rachel. Pretty intense at times but a very focused professional team! |
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Fieldwork
May 2019 Sometimes the pressures of supervising fieldwork just get overwhelming! Starlings already with chicks 8-10 days old. Jo's experiment (removing partners to investigate parental coordination) going well. Field crew this year a lot of fun. |
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Field season 2019 is underway
April 2019 A new field crew: Jo (MSc), Lara and Leah (both undergraduate USRA students). Main experiment will look at parental coordination in pairs of starlings. Its only April 16th and laying is pretty much over - dawn raids to catch all females over Easter weekend! |
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Dr. Jeff Yap Convocates!
October 2018
Dr Yap is officially in the house ... and now established in Auburn (note the matching colours!). |
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Jesse Kemp presents at SFU's Undergraduate Poster Competition
Sept 2018
Presenting her USRA research on costs of parental care with the awesome title, 'Chopping bits of bird's wings doesn't make raising chicks more difficult"
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Alberta bound! Bidding a sad farewell to Francois
May 2018 Really enjoyed having Francois Criscuolo (CNRS-Strasbourg, France) staying for 2 weeks checking out our starling work for future collaborations. Turns out he's an awesome field assistant!! Lots of fieldwork, lots of good food, a bit of birding, and lots of telomere talk. Multiple papers to follow ..... He's now going to play with ground squirrels in the Rockies for a month. |
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Congratulations to Jeff Yap
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It's not all science
February 2018 The lab does 'Dine Out Vancouver" - except we had to settle for brunch. Good company and good food though (duck poutine, pork cheek hash) and a beer flight for the Prof! |
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HITTING UP SICB!!!!
January 2018 A small - but very high quality - lab attendance in San Francisco for SICB. Olivia wowed people with her work on nitrates and Hct, Jeff talked about costs of training and reproduction (and went shopping for post-docs) and even Tony did some stuff (do animals exercise ....?). |
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Congratulations to Chloe Boynton
September 2017 Chloe successfully defended her MSc thesis Friday on 'Breeding productivity, phenology and habitat use of two co-occurring aerial insectivores' |
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SURJ Poster Competition
September 2017 Three of our undergrads (Colleen, Olivia and Melissa) presented research at the first annual SURJ poster competition - and Olivia picked up 2nd place! Visit the SURJ facebook page to see more pictures! |
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The Ecology of Exercise
August 2017 The Special Issue of Integrative and Comparative Biology from our symposium at the New Orleans SICB meeting (January 2017) is now available here. Eleven papers on a wide range of topics on exercise, training and performance from humans to birds to fish. Also, check out our Virtual Issue in Functional Ecology on the same topic here. |
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Congratulations to Olga Lansdorp August 2017 Olga successfully defended her MSc thesis today on 'Habitat drivers of Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) feeding behaviour and breeding productivity' |
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One of our undergraduate volunteers on the song project, Yasmin Khalili, now doing great biomedical research
August 2017 Yasmin first got involved in research when taking BISC 102 through her "amazing TA for the course" Allison Cornell! She helped us document avian song, nest building, and pre-copulatory behaviours as part of out European starling project. Read Yasmin's full story here. |
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Congratulations to Kate Gibson for publishing in Journal of Ornithology
May 2017 Congratulations to undergraduate Kate Gibson for getting her paper, ‘Intraclutch egg size variation is independent of ecological context among years in the European starling Sturnus vulgaris’, published in Journal of Ornithology. Kate's research experience started in her 2nd year with a BISC 498 in the Williams Lab followed by an Undergraduate Student Research Award, both on reproduction in European Starlings. Kate is also co-author on two published papers all from her work as an undergraduate. Read more about her accomplishments here. |
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Mitchell Serota successfully defends his MSc
May 2017 Congratulations to Mitchell Serota who successfully defended his MSc on 'Variation in Parental Care in European Starlings'. Mitch is off to Mexico for a 2-year position with the Peace Corps. |
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Undergrads from the Williams Lab start their summer USRA projects
May 2017 Congratulations to Colleen Gillespie and Olivia Tsai, both second year undergraduates who are working on NSERC USRA projects in this summer. Colleen will be collecting data on European Starlings to analyze timing of parental and nest failure. Olivia is validating the use of dietary nitrate to manipulate hematological parameters in zebra finch. |
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Allison Cornell successfully defends her PhD
Apr 2017 Congratulations to Allison Cornell who successfully defended her PhD on ‘Predictive Cues and Fitness Consequences of Breeding Phenology’. Allison now has an Assistant Professor position at Cedar Crest College. |
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Jeff Yap featured in Science: Birds don't need exercise to stay fit for epic flights
Jan 2017 How hard do animals work during routine activities (finding food, mates)? This was the topic of a recent symposium on 'The Ecology of Exercise" organised by Tony Williams at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in New Orleans. The symposium along with an interview with Jeff Yap is featured in Science. Read the article here. |
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New paper by Crossin and Williams explains weird penguin reproduction
Oct 2016 Crested penguins do a lot of weird stuff when it comes to reproduction: they lay two eggs but only ever rear one chick, the first egg is much smaller than then second egg, and sometimes females even kick the small egg out of the nest. This unique reproductive pattern has attracted the attention of biologists since the 1960 but has remained unresolved. In a recent paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society Glenn Crossin (ex-SFU post-doc now at Dalhousie) and Tony Williams suggest that the pattern of egg-size dimorphism across 16 penguin species can be explained by how much they overlap two "expensive" activities: swimming rapidly back to the breeding grounds from wintering areas, and egg formation, i.e. there is likely a "physiological conflict" between migration and reproduction. Read the article and National Geographic coverage. |
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Jeff Yap and Allison Cornell present at TA/TM day
Mar 2016 Jeff and Allison bring their teaching experience to TM/TA day, an orientation program for teaching assistants and markers. In their collaborative presentation, "Encouraging Active Learning in the Laboratory," they share some important tips on how to keep tutorials engaging and rewarding for students. Read more here. |
Photos used under Creative Commons from Liam Quinn Elsie esq.
