the effects of blowflies on songbirds in new mexico
In 1997, Dr. Jeanne Fair established a network of 438 nest boxes on the Pajarito Plateau in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to study the developmental patterns of immune response, growth, and mortality of nestling songbirds in relation to uncharacterized soil contamination. Over the past two decades, these nest boxes have been monitored by research teams at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the reproductive biology of the two most common residents - western bluebirds and ash-throated flycatchers - have been studied in detail. I am currently investigating whether bluebirds and flycatchers are tolerant to blowflies over a long-term scale, or whether tolerance fluctuates annually.
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