CURRENT RESEARCH
How does individual personality influence the delivery of ecosystem services?
Barn owls play important roles in pest-management in many agricultural systems. In central California, vineyard managers deploy barn owl boxes throughout their crops to promote occupancy by nesting barn owls, who remove rodent pest species from winegrape crops. However, it is still unknown how individual personality affects barn owl movement, foraging behavior, and ultimate delivery of ecosystem services. Some individuals may forage closer to their home box, while other may travel widespread distances for a meal. Thus, ultimate impacts on rodents pest removal may vary by individual and their associated personality traits.
For my Master's Thesis, I aim to address this gap in knowledge by studying adult breeding American barn owls (Tyto furcata) nesting in winegrape vineyards around Lodi, California.
Project Objectives:
(1) quantify individual personality using a novel object test
(2) evaluate fine-scale hunting behavior using GPS-accelerometer tags, and
(3) assess the effects of the relationship between personality traits and hunting behavior on the removal of rodent pest species within target vineyards.
american barn owls
POWERFUL AGENTS OF PEST CONTROL
Birds provide a breadth of indirect benefits to agroecosystems, namely through powerful top-down
controls by consumption of economically damaging species, including rodents. Installing artificial nest
boxes on agricultural landscapes has become a popular approach to promoting occupancy of
Barn owls, the natural enemy of several rodent pest species. Barn owls are of particular value to
integrated pest management due to their cosmopolitan distribution, highly mobile nature,
rapid rate of prey consumption and delivery to young, propensity to nest in human-habitated
environments, and low territoriality of adults, allowing for relatively high
densities of owls across landscapes. The practice of using barn owls
as agents of pest control in agriculture has become increasingly
popular throughout the world, with established networks of
barn owl boxes in Switzerland, Malaysia, Israel, and several US
states including California.
Tyto furcata
