ORAS May Meeting: GSU student will talk about Henslow's Sparrow habitat selection in Georgia powerline right-of-ways

Please join us virtually for our monthly meeting at 7pm on Thursday, May 6th where Georgia Southern University Masters student, Abbie Dwire, will talk about her research on Henslow's Sparrow habitat selection in Georgia coastal plains. Please use this link to register for the meeting: https://forms.gle/GXMZET5p3qm4z4eo8. More details about the talk below:

          (photos: Abbie Dwire)

The drastic decline of pine savanna habitat in the Southeast U.S. over the past two centuries begs the question: What has happened to the wildlife that once used it? Henslow’s Sparrows are a charismatic bird that traditionally used the understory of pine savannas for shelter and food in the winter months. Over the past decade they have been found using the boggy grassland habitat of power line right-of-ways (ROWs) in Georgia’s coastal plain. Abbie’s project is looking into what habitat characteristics Henslow’s Sparrows are selecting for in the ROWs and how much space they are using by tracking them with radio-telemetry. This research will contribute to the ongoing management of the ROWs for the conservation of this rare species in Georgia.

Abbie Dwire is a MS candidate in the Department of Biology at Georgia Southern University under the advisement of Dr. Elizabeth Hunter. Abbie earned her BS degree in Biology at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. As a research technician after her undergraduate studies, Abbie studied a wide variety of animals from bighorn sheep in Nebraska to Black Rails in the ACE Basin of South Carolina. She is in her second year of her graduate program and her research interests lie in landscape ecology and strategies for managing and conserving natural ecosystems.