Monday, February 26, 2024

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society Seminar Series presents Dr. Scott Davies

 Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society

Seminar Series presents

Dr. Scott Davies

Associate Professor of Biology, Quinnipiac University

“Coping with environmental change:

Reproductive adjustments of songbirds to urban living”

 

Monday, April 1 at 2:00 PM in Student Center 119

Urbanization profoundly alters the environment and forces urban organisms to adjust to the new conditions. Since urban areas are one of the most rapidly expanding habitat types worldwide, the potential impact of urbanization on biodiversity is substantial. There is, therefore, an urgent need to understand the mechanisms responsible for adjustment to these new habitats.

Like most wild animals, birds have distinct seasonal breeding periods that are synchronized with optimal environmental conditions to maximize reproductive success. Hence, it may be advantageous for urban birds to adjust the timing of reproductive activity to local environmental conditions. This presentation will describe how wild songbirds adjust their reproductive activity to live in urban areas and explore the mechanisms responsible for these adjustments.

Dr. Scott Davies is originally from the United Kingdom and got his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Wales, Bangor. He moved to the USA to complete his PhD at Arizona State University studying the reproductive endocrinology of urban birds. He then continued his work on the physiology of urban living as a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech and the University of Nevada, Reno.  He has been at Quinnipiac since 2017.

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