Janis Dickinson's Lab

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Welcome - Dickinson Lab

Janis L. Dickinson, Associate Professor, Natural Resources, Arthur A. Allen Director of Citizen Science, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology

Member of Graduate Fields:

Natural Resources & Neurobiology and Behavior

I take graduate students in either field:  MS/Ph.D.  students in the field of Natural Resources and Ph.D. students in the field of Neurobiology and Behavior (Animal Behavior). My lab is currently full.

History

I have been a faculty member in Natural Resources and Director of Citizen Science at Cornell Lab of Ornithology since fall of 2005.  After 18 years at U.C. Berkeley, I feel very lucky to be able to return to Cornell, where I earned my Ph.D. in 1987.         

As Director of Citizen Science at Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, I am developing research models that involve a blend of citizen research participation over a broad spatial scale with more focused projects at a selection of sites to address impacts of anthropogenic changes on biodiversity within a rich social and scientific context.  My first research project with citizen science, Personality Profiles, looks at how neophobia (fear of novel objects) is expressed in cavity-nesting birds.

In the years from 1987-2005 I held a graduated series of positions in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley, as an off-site researcher living at Hastings Natural History Reserve in the remote reaches of Carmel Valley, CA.  My ongoing research program at Hastings Reserve involves using a long-term study of color-banded western bluebirds as a model system for testing key hypotheses regarding the evolution of mating systems, sex ratio, dispersal behavior, cooperative breeding, migration, and life history traits.  At Hastings Reserve, mistletoe grows on deciduous oaks and produces a sustained berry crop over the winter. It appears to be a form of wealth that drives family group living in western bluebirds. Although sons typically winter on their natal territories with their parents and sometimes become nonbreeding helpers, reducing mistletoe wealth by half causes sons to leave home.  Currently, the western bluebird project is directed at understanding bluebird-mistletoe interactions and projecting the impacts of vineyard development of the oak savanna habitats on western bluebird population viability California.  This work incorporates field experiments and demographic analysis with GIS landscape modeling. 

Trained as an entomologist, I have also studied insect mating systems within the context of multi-male mating and sperm competition.

Curriculum Vitae - click here for ...

Publications - click here for ...

Media Links

• Nature Podcast on Personality Profiles - http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/v442/n7105/
  nature-2006-08-24.mp3
• BBC “The Rules of Life” with Aubrey Manning, Programme 5 “Happy Families” - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/
  science/rulesoflife.shtml
• National Geographic News - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/
• Great Backyard Bird Count - Http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
  story.php?storyId=5221793
• Cornell - http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April06/
  LabTaskForce.ksr.html