At the close of Week 2 (Sunday, 2 Nov.), we see the gap among leading teams narrowing, as the Bucs close in on the Thirsty Thursdays. Collectively, you folks are doing amazingly well with a total of close to 50,000 image categorizations in the past two weeks. At the end of next week, we will start to connect your Wildlife CSI experience to class. Keep up the good work. Click on table below to expand it.
This fall seven teams of students from Trinity’s introductory biology course are competing in a Wildlife CSI contest. At the close of Week 1, “Thirsty (for Knowledge) Thursdays” has made their presence know, but at this early stage things can change dramatically. Stay tuned and thanks to these citizen scientist students for their role in this research! Click table to enlarge.
The Nature Conservancy’s blog Cool Green Science recently highlighted Wildlife CSI. Check out the story at
http://blog.nature.org/science/2014/10/14/citizen-science-tuesday-wildlife-csi/
Large producers of food waste in Massachusetts now must compost. Check out this New England public radio story: http://nepr.net/news/2014/10/15/not-in-our-landfill-massachusetts-ban-on-food-waste/ 
A recent study has documented how African vultures when searching for food, carrion that often occurs in unpredictable locations, rely on visually locating eagles that have already found the food. Click here for further description of this work.
Our research shows the red-shouldered hawks in Connecticut are most likely to scavenge from compost piles when crows are already on the scene. Both studies point to how interspecific interactions within a community of scavengers can influence an individual species foraging behavior.
Our pilot project looking at veterans’ responses to wildlife images from ecological research runs through the end of September. With good participation by local veterans in this pilot, we hope to convince the National Science Foundation to fund an on-line citizen science program that will benefit not only Connecticut veterans, but veterans nationwide.
To learn more about this opportunity for veterans, read and listen to recent coverage on WNPR: http://wnpr.org/post/citizen-science-project-trinity-college-taps-trained-eyes-veterans
Crickets eat your compost, and you eat the nutritious crickets. To see how visit: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28969505 .
Changes to landscapes due to human activities can affect scavengers. Power line towers in relatively treeless sagebrush ecosystems are preferred nesting sites for ravens, birds which are both predators and scavengers. The addition of these artificial nesting locations appears linked to the raven’s increased abundance in these ecosystems over recent decades. For more on this, check out http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811132302.htm
The Veterans’ Citizen Science Pilot Project was the subject of the July 21 “Sandbox Chronicles.” This program on Citizen Television in New Haven (Channel 96) focuses on the transition of Iraq and Afghan veterans. Video of the show will be posted later.
Our Veterans’ Citizen Science Pilot was featured on the July 18th airing of “Voice of the Veteran” on WNHU, hosted by Gabe Kautzner and Justin Furuare. This show is dedicated to making veterans aware of resources available to aid their transition following military service.
Audio from the program is accessible below:
