Rachel Hanauer

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Department of Biology

The genus Aglaeactis is restricted to the high Andes, from Colombia to Bolivia. The breeding biology of the Shining Sunbeam (A. cupripennis) is well-known compared with the other three species of this genus, which have relatively small ranges. In this study we present the first description of the nest, eggs, and nestlings of the Peruvian endemic Wh...

Organisms are expected to invest less in reproduction in response to a stressor, but theory predicts that this effect should depend on the frequency and duration of stressors in the environment. Here we investigated how an acute stressor affected testes function in a songbird, and how chronic stressors influenced the acute stress response. We expos...

Organisms are expected to invest less in reproduction in response to a stressor, but theory predicts that this effect should depend on the frequency of stressors in the environment. Here we investigated how an acute stressor affected gonadal function in a songbird, and how long-term differences in the stress environment influenced these acute stres...

Background/Question/Methods Parasite species and infection prevalence vary between host populations. Because parasites can have major fitness costs for hosts, environments with different parasite communities (eg. urban versus rural environments) may impose different selective pressures on host populations. Resisting parasites requires energetic i...

Many species of common birds, including some known to adapt to urban habitats, have declined in North America. The Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) is an urban adapter that has declined in Florida by 1.7% per year since 1966. We used mockingbirds in Florida as a case study to determine possible reasons for the paradoxical decline of an urba...