​(1) Species turnover along a gradient of height above the ground – Burying beetles at the Queen's University Biological Station appear to segregate their breeding distributions, with most breeding on the ground, and one or two species breeding off the ground. This project would use experiments in nature to determine where the species overlap their distributions along a height-above-ground gradient, and where they turnover. The experiments will involve placing mouse carcasses at different heights above the ground to document, for the first time, the spatial distributions of breeding Nicrophorus along a height gradient.

 

(2) Does resource type promote ecological partitioning in Nicrophorus beetles? — Nicrophorus burying beetles are generally thought to use any small vertebrate carcass for breeding because carcasses from different vertebrate classes are similar in composition, and suitable carcasses are so rare that a beetle would be crazy to turn one down. Nonetheless, few studies have tested whether Nicrophorus prefer carcasses of specific vertebrate classes (e.g., mammal vs fish), and if different Nicrophorus species partition carcasses based on vertebrate class. This work would present wild beetles at the Queen's University Biological Station with small (20-30g) vertebrate carcasses of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and fish, and record which species of Nicrophorus use which carcasses for reproduction.

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(3) Are climatic limits maintained by species in their introduced ranges? — Recent evidence suggests that most introduced species conserve their climatic niche breadth in their non-native range; however, our understanding of the role of climate in directly or indirectly limiting the distributions of species is poor for most species. Community science data provide some of the most detailed and geographically extensive information on relative abundance of species across both native and introduced ranges, allowing us to test ideas of climatic limits on the distributions of species, and how these climatic limits differ across native and introduced ranges. The project would use geographically explicit data on the relative abundance of 107 species of non-migratory birds coupled with detailed climate data to test if the geographic limits of species coincide with their climatic limits, and if these same relationships are mirrored in their native and introduced ranges.

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​(4) What ecological traits covary with behavioural dominance of species? — Previous work in our lab (Freshwater et al. 2014, Ecology) was the first to describe repeated patterns of trait divergence that depended upon the position of a species within a social dominance hierarchy. Specifically, subordinate species of birds arrived earlier on their breeding sites, initiated breeding earlier, had lower annual adult survivorship, laid larger eggs for their weight, and migrated greater distances, than closely-related, dominant species. These patterns were exciting because they suggested that important traits related to phenology, life history, and migration are influenced by where a species sits within a social hierarchy of other species. The work was based on an analysis of 65 closely-related species pairs of North American birds – all of the data on dominance interactions among congeners that was available at the time. Today, we have dominance data for ~200 species pairs of birds from around the world. Are the patterns of trait divergence evident in North American dominance hierarchies representative of birds from around the world? Are other patterns of trait divergence (e.g., geographic range size, distribution) evident among dominant and subordinate species when addressed with a larger sample? This project would revisit some of the questions addressed by Freshwater et al. (2014) using a larger, more powerful, global dataset on dominance relationships among birds.