Dana Williams studies alert behavior in marmots.

My name is Dana Williams. I grew up in a little town in Western Massachusetts on the border of Vermont, where my grandmother would often take me out into the woods to teach me botany. My parents and I often traveled to western Canada visiting and hiking in areas similar to RMBL. I wanted to return and study in this amazing environment. This coming fall, I will be a senior at Wellesley College. I majoring in Biology with a minor in Environmental Studies. This summer, I got the opportunity to come study with Team Marmot at RMBL.

My research this summer is about the potential effects of spontaneous movement on estimates of alert distance. This is all related to economic escape behavior, or when an animal decides it's time to run away. Alert distance is the point during a predator's approach when the prey first acknowledges the predator as a threat. This is followed by a point  called the flight initiation distance (FID), where the prey leaves for cover. These measurements of these two help us understand how animals make cost-benefit analyses under predation risk. 


My project involves being a part of the regular observation team but in addition to recording our two minute "foraging focals", where we observe a foraging animal for two minutes and dictate its actions into a handheld recording device. I am also conducting non-foraging focals for animals at rest and focals before conducting FIDs. The FIDs are measured by walking towards a marmot and marking the alert distance and the flight initiation distance.

Long-term research featured in The Scientist

The marmot project was featured in a story in The Scientist about the value of long-term research.

Marmot team also studies birds!

My name is Jessica Whitaker and I am a senior zoology major at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. I anticipate attending graduate school to study birds or animal behavior.  I’m super excited to spend my summer at RMBL testing whether birds have the ability to distinguish among types of nonlinear acoustic phenomena: noise and two types of deterministic chaos.  I will complete playback experiments in the field and quantify behavioral responses of birds to determine if the types of sound are perceived differently.  In addition, I plan to study the degradation of sound over space by broadcasting and recording sounds at increasing distancesand using spectrogram correlation to compare noise and two types of deterministic chaos.  My favorite part of the project is hiking around the beautiful mountain landscape and finding birds willing to listen to my stimuli.

Thanks to NSF for help supporting our marmot project: and a disclaimer

I'm filling out my annual NSF report now and want to both thank the NSF for on-going support on the marmot projects and point out that this is our blog, and is in no way vetted by the NSF.

So, the official disclaimers are:

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (DEB-1119660)

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The last member of the early season team Marmot!

My name is Line Cordes and I was the last member of team Marmot to arrive in late April. I am from Denmark, but have lived elsewhere for the last 12 years pursuing a career in population ecology. I completed my MSc and PhD at University of Aberdeen, Scotland developing and running an individual-based study of harbour seals, studying their demography and pupping phenology. During the completion of my PhD I took on a postdoc where I, as part of a team, investigated the impacts of seismic surveys on cetaceans. Most recently, I have moved to Fort Collins, CO with my husband who was offered a postdoc at CSU, and I have been working as a visiting scientist either volunteering or taking on contracts both within and outside of CSU to analyse data within the field of population ecology. I arrived at RMBL just in time for the emergence of the first marmots. This meant that it was a speedy introduction to identifying individuals as well as observing and documenting their social behaviour. I was assigned one particular colony called Avalanche for the first three days and enjoyed the challenge of trying to keep track of eight playful yearlings running rings around an adult male. Gothic is truly a stunning place to live and work, and what a pleasure to have it to ourselves for a few weeks before it officially opens.

Groundhogs in the news!

Groundhog terrorizes a little league team:  http://now.msn.com/groundhog-terrorizes-bridgeton-little-league

Clobert report features groundhogs in a conspiracy theory argument (it's the second segment!):  http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/mon-may-6-2013-robert-caro

Our crew is now in the field.  Of course, now the snow really starts...

Nicole saw a marmot at Stonefield the other day and Timothee writes:
"It's my first year at RMBL as a research assistant and I'm already fond of the place ! We got there last week, and despite the recurrent snow we were able to spot some marmots (shame on me, I've confounded a ground squirrel with a yearling here...) but also to see a pair of coyotes.

We're now waiting for the snow melt and the emergence of our cute rodents. But when... Place your bets !"

Some of his nice photos are below.