Some mobile blogging from the ABS meeting

Sign language interpreter at a talk on vocalizations in chickadees. We were wondering how many of the scientific terms actually have their own signs. I bet there are more than we think, but I bet there are a lot of things that challenge them.

Great hypothesis testing from tropical birds. It has taken 10 years to collect enough data to test a series of hypotheses on why a tropical species of wren sing duets. Have to get used to seeing small sample sizes and non-parametric stats for these behavior talks!

Dustin rockin' out the junco short-range songs. These are a group of bird songs that are not studied very often and their role is not very well understood. They sound really crazy, like robot noises. His talk ended with a great animation to a recording made of a male "dive-bombing" a female.

So frustrating when the AV set up detract from the quality of a talk. Can barely hear a word from this speaker, microphone pointing the wrong direction. Slides full of too small images. I think this must actually be an advertisement for a behavioral data collection program.

Second talk about invasive species, didn't really think I would see many of those here.

Saw a poster that was on aggressive behaviors in kittens. This means she got to watch kittens while doing science! Maybe she needs an assistant...

Also saw a poster from the group at Miami University-Ohio that probably has data I helped collect from Bayles Rd when I was a field assistant for them in 2007 :)