January 2024: A big trip and a big research publication
In late December 2023 we went to Argentina to observe cliff swallows on the wintering grounds for the first time. We targeted Iberá...
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April 2024: An early arrival
The 2024 research field season kicked off early, with our arrival in Nebraska in April to study the movement behavior of cliff swallows...
November 2023
Since our last update, we completed our 41st and 42nd field seasons in summers 2022 and 2023. During these seasons, Olivia Pletcher...
March 2022
We completed our 40th field season in summer 2021. It was a difficult year in some ways, with the deaths of both Paul Johnsgard and...
August 2020
We completed our 39th field season on 8 August 2020 despite limitations on personnel due to pandemic restrictions this summer. Our work...
July 2020
The project's latest paper to appear, in Biology Letters, reports that cliff swallows that die during severe weather and that live in...
August 2019
The project lost one of its founders on 24 August 2019, when Mary Bomberger Brown died in Lincoln, Nebraska, after a long illness. Mary...
October 2018
Two publications appeared dealing with natural selection in cliff swallows during severe climatic events. One, in Ecosphere, documented...
August 2018
The 2018 field season was an outstanding success, with progress made on four major research themes that included (1) continued collection...
February 2018
A paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology was published, reporting analyses of survival in primarily nestling birds from the 1980's,...
October 2017
A paper in Animal Behaviour was published, reporting the results of a large-scale analysis of breeding-site fidelity in cliff swallows....
July 2017
The 2017 field season ended successfully on 22 July. In contrast to last summer, cliff swallow reproductive success across the study area...
February 2017
A nice feature on the cliff swallow project, by Conor Gearin, appeared in issue 4 of The New Territory magazine. Conor's article focused...
August 2016
The summer 2016 nesting season in Nebraska was marked by extensive nest failures at colonies throughout the study area. We are unsure of...
March 2016
The swallow project had a high-profile publication appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This paper reported the...
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