Theresa Higgins- Art & Science

Research Background

Hawaii VINE

I started working as a lab technician for graduate students Rebecca Wilcox and Sam Case, under Dr. Corey Tarwater, during the fall semester 2017. The project that I assisted with is called the Hawaii VINE (Vertebrate Introductions and Novel Ecosystems) project, which is a multi-university effort to understand the effects of species turnover, invasive species, local extinctions, and community interactions in a rapidly changing novel environment.

The project that I worked on was looking at seed dispersal of native plant species by both native and non-native birds. These plants are reliant on dispersers to spread their seeds far from the parent plant in order to prevent inbreeding and competition between relatives. If the seeds are not dispersed, then these elevated inbreeding and competition levels between related plants may eventually lead to the extinction of the species in each area, altering the community and environment.

I assisted with determining frugivory rates of birds on these plant species between both native and non-native birds. This is important because it shows whether non-native birds are willing and able to spread the seeds of native plants. It also displays whether native species are still spreading native fruits. This gives us information on whether the natural native dispersers of these plants have gone extinct on the island or if native birds are changing their preference to foraging on invasive plant species.

https://www.tarwaterlab.com/hawaii-vine-project

consequences of choices
spreading of species to prevent competition and survival

The Zebra Finch Project

I have always been interested in intelligence, how it is defined, how it can (or cannot) be quantified, how learning works, how personalities develop, and, mostly, how nobody can agree on anything and how little we seem to know, despite how much time and research has gone into answering these questions. I have, in the past few years, developed an interest particularly for avian cognition, intelligence, and personality. I find it fascinating how birds can show such solid signs of intellect in their tool use, personalities, special mapping, and self-awareness while also having evolved entirely separately from all other animals that we consider intelligent such as dolphins, monkeys, and ourselves.

This led me to the Animal Behavior and Cognition Lab, headed by Dr. Sarah Benson-Amram, spring semester 2019. There I worked on the Zebra Finch Project undergraduate student Lisa Barrett. This project looked to assess if zebra finches displayed personality differences and problem-solving abilities and found that they do. It also looked at the ability of these birds to learn how so solve tasks from social learning, or watching another bird preform the task. This was tested by teaching one bird of a mated pair one step of a two-step puzzle and its mate the other step, and then seeing if they could solve the whole thing when put together.

https://animalcognitionlab.org/research

the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills
personality development
avian cognition connected to ours?
communication and ability to work together 
strength in numbers

Independent Projects

I am still a member of both of these labs but now most of my time has been shifted to other areas as the graduate students I have been working with have wrapped up their research and have graduated or will be graduating soon. I was encouraged by both labs to develop independent projects and apply for funding spring of 2019. Those have been my main projects over the past year, though there have been a couple others so I will include those as well.

Animal Recognition AI

Benson-Amram Animal Behavior and Cognition Lab. Funded Summer 2019 by NASA Space Grant.

The use of technology in scientific studies is a constant area of research and development. In many ecological field studies, camera traps are used to research impacts of animals on their environment and record interactions. A major issue with these camera traps, however, is that, unless each animal is individually marked in a clear, distinctive way, it is nearly impossible to accurately detect how many animals seen over the course of the study were repeat individuals. In order to address this issue, Benson-Amram is developing an automated recognition system similar to how Facebook distinguishes between faces in their photo tag programs. I assisted with this last summer collecting and processing data using the lab’s zebra finches.

Mandarte Song Sparrow Behavior

Tarwater Ecology Lab. Funded Fall 2019-Spring 2021 by Wyoming Research Scholars Program.

The study of avian behavior is a growing field but due to issues with repeatability, it can be difficult to perform these experiments with wild populations. Located off of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, there is a 6ha island called Mandarte. On this island there is an isolated population of song sparrows that has been studied, banded, and recorded for over 45 years. This provides a unique opportunity to perform not only behavioral studies on these birds with repeatability but also allows for inbreeding levels, relatedness, and paternal effects to be considered in the study.

My work with these birds has been to assess interactions between birds using footage of a feeding arena. The birds in this study are competing for this food resource in preparation for the oncoming winter (videos were recorded in October). Using these videos, and with the assistance of graduate student Rebecca Wilcox, I am assessing three behavioral traits: 1) boldness, or willingness to return to a foraging location after a potential predator (human) has walked through the area; 2) aggression, or how often an individual chases away, or is chased away by other birds; and 3) neophobia, or latency to approach a new object, in this case the feeding arena and camera.

I will then assess what variables have an impact on the behavior of these birds using demographic data and potential field work over this summer (2020, may be canceled due to COVID). These variables will include inbreeding coefficient, age, sex, and size. Other variables that I would like to look into, if I am able to conduct field work, would be heritability of behavioral traits and seasonal effects.

And if field work cannot be done this summer- what then?
do you have other choices so your research is not at a stand still?
It couldn't be done this summer so instead I will be continuing to work with old data and writing a paper to be submitted to scientific journals. As far as new work, yes, it is a stand still, but it allows for time to complete old work too.

Panama Field Course 2020

In conjunction with Tarwater Ecology Lab, under supervision of Dr. Patrick Kelley.

This past January, I had the opportunity to participate in a field program in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Gamboa, Panama. There I developed and conducted an independent project with the assistance of Dr. Kelley and graduate student Laura Gomez-Murillo.

In many bird species, song dialect varies across family groups, regions, and continents. Many bird species are also known to respond aggressively to intruders of the same species in their territories. I looked at how Tropical Mockingbirds responded to recorded songs of the same species across varied distances and therefore varied dialects ranging from similar to strongly distinct. The varied aggressive responses of the subject Tropical Mockingbirds to the varied dialects could provide more information into whether these birds are more threatened by similar, or potentially related, birds or by dissimilar, or unrelated birds.
This is so interesting Terri.  Of course I think why wouldn't birds have different dialects- makes sense to me being from the south honestly and then the treatment of those with dialects especially. 
,primarily a negative response.
It was very interesting! It wasn't something I had given significant thought to before but it was cool reading papers where you could see the visual differences in notes/pitch and also to try and identify differences myself, when conducting the playbacks. 

First Year Seminar and Communications Research

In conjunction with Honors College and USP, under the supervision of Dr. Janel Seeley.

This is research that is entirely unrelated to anything else I have done, but as I am trying to do an interdisciplinary project for my thesis, it didn’t feel entirely irrelevant to include. As a part of a small (8-10 student) honors course, I conducted research from fall 2018 to fall 2019 on student perceptions, outcomes, and responses to first year seminar programs (FYS) and communication (COM 1, 2, and 3) courses, required for all students to take by the University Studies Program.

We conducted pre and post surveys administered to students enrolled in FYS courses as well as interviews with students who had taken an FYS course 1, 2, or 3 years prior. We then processed our data and presented our findings at a symposium attended by faculty and stakeholders from a wide variety of departments. This research will be used to instruct further development of USP requirements in an effort to increase retention, student interest, critical thinking, and other essential collegiate and career skills.  Why only students and not instructors as well? There were also interviews and surveys done with the instructors but I never saw any of that data or what became of it because a graduate student was working with it.

Then, in the summer of 2019, I attended the Students as Partners conference/workshop in Adelaide, Australia, along with two faculty members, a graduate student, and two other undergraduates. Here, as a group, we developed a research class for the upcoming year (Fall 2019 - Spring 2020), that would further expand our research into communications courses.

Mind Map For Project Ideas

What you have done this far is very interesting Terri.  
So when I look over blog posts from students, I write or highlight as I go to really clue in on what they are trying to pinpoint/communicate/express in their work.

So what research specifically are you focusing on for the senior project grant or is this the question for me?
I have no idea honestly. There is a lot of things I find interesting but I do think it might be interesting to work with something related to Panama and Hawaii and the systems/issues there just because that is what I have become the most familiar with. But as to what I would focus on and then also what kind of art I would produce because of it, I really don't know yet.

When I think about focusing on issues that are often art and science related, I usually hone in on a way that we as humans can step in and help what is happening in nature so that either change can occur in nature or can bring other humans attention to how to help change nature around us for the better of our world/planet.

All of your projects are amazing and thoughtful, but I tend to lean towards thinking about the projects you have been a part of that connect directly to us as humans simply because humans are who you will be speaking to if using any visual expression for your project.

So it comes down to what is most important to you right now- knowing you can change this focus after you are done? 
It isn't something I have thought a ton about and it isn't something I think I really understand how to think about. I mean I guess a lot of my research has had something to do with species loss, whether it be combating changes in a system do to an already lost species or finding ways to "rescue" species from extinction - which is often brought on by human interference. But that is still a very broad topic and I'm not exactly sure how to hone it in further while also not claiming to know more about the issues surrounding species loss than I actually do.

It could be interesting to work on something having to do with Hawaii and how the invasive species were predominantly brought over by humans, changing the ecosystem and driving native species to extinction. It could also be interesting to do something about the species that adapted to these changes and persisted. Seed dispersal could possibly be another interesting topic to address and how that is instigated through transportation by animals.

I think the dialect thing could also be interesting, doing something with the physical frequency of the songs (example can be found in this paper https://royalsocietypublishing-org.libproxy.uwyo.edu/doi/10.1098/rsos.190719). But I'm not quite sure what I would do with it. I think my issue is that I have a hard time relating these things back to human issues beyond "humans are kind of not great to the environment" because I see things too strongly through a scientific lens. I would love to create something with a sort of double meaning, which makes these issues relatable to people but I'm not sure where to go or how to build an idea to reach that outcome.