(828) 526-0173 | [email protected] | Copyright 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
Sustaining the Ecology: Highlands Biological Foundation
Issue: 2021/05 – May
Keeping track of our winged neighbors requires a concerted effort and a watchmaker’s attention to detail.
A worm-eating warbler has its wing measured gently by a Blue Ridge Bird Observatory biologist.
Last summer, thanks to funding from the Highlands Biological Foundation, the Highlands Biological Station initiated a MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) bird banding station on our campus.
MAPS is a continent-wide research program aimed at better understanding songbird demographic trends, which is important given recent research findings showing that bird populations in North America have plummeted nearly 30 percent since the 1970s.
One factor that may play a role in this decline is food availability. We know that insects, particularly larval insects like caterpillars, are critical food items for both adult songbirds and their young; a shortage of caterpillars means lower survivorship of nestlings.
To try and quantify the abundance and biomass of insects from trees on our campus, this summer we’ll be implementing a project called Caterpillars Count!. This project was developed by Dr. Allen Hurlbert, an ecology professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Lauren Whitenack, a former UNC-Chapel Hill IE student at HBS, will be the lead MAPS bird-bander for the Station this summer.
She’ll also be implementing the Caterpillars Count! project at HBS and three other banding stations in the mountains that are run by our partner, the Blue Ridge Bird Observatory.
Researchers will use the Caterpillars Count! data to correlate insect abundance and biomass with data collected from birds that we capture and band, such as songbird body fat index and the number of fledglings and juvenile birds captured.
We also hope to have our Nature Center summer campers assist with Caterpillars Count!
For more information about our MAPS bird banding station, visit our website at highlandsbiological.org/data/ or call us at (828) 526-2602. The Highlands Biological Station is a multi-center campus of Western Carolina University.
How Does Caterpillars Count! Work?
Anyone can participate in Caterpillars Count! Visit caterpillarscount.unc.edu to get started. Select a leafy branch of a tree and identify the insects found on the leafy branch to Order (e.g. moth, beetle, fly), estimate the length of each insect, and count the number on a given leafy branch. You can also place a white cloth or “beat sheet” below the branch, shake the branch, and collect data on the insects that fall on the sheet.
