Field Research | Duke Research Blog

Grey Seal’s Travels Hint at Animal’s Unknown Habits

May 29th, 2013

By Ashley Yeager

This juvenile male grey seal swam up onto a North Carolina beach recently, surprising locals. Image courtesy of: StarNews Online.

On May 23, visitors to Carolina Beach met an unexpected guest — a male grey seal.

The 300-plus-pound juvenile was somewhat of a surprise to North Carolinians, since his typical habitat ranges from the coastal waters of Canada and extend south to about New Jersey. It is the first time a grey seal has been seen as far south as the Carolinas.

But the seal’s southern swim wasn’t too surprising to Duke marine biologist Dave Johnston.

“Things have been weird with seals for the last ten years or so. We’ve been seeing more harp, hooded and grey seals much farther south, usually the males,” he says.

To track seals’ travel patterns, Johnston and his colleagues have started attaching cell-phone enabled GPS tags to the animals in the Cape Cod region. They tagged their first grey seal, Bronx, last summer and from his transmissions alone have learned where the creatures like to hang out, how deep they can dive and just how far they can swim.

Bronx has covered the equivalent of the land area of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined during his swims. He’s explored below the ocean depths nearly 900 feet — a little more than a tenth of a mile, and he’s even made an international trip, crossing into Canadian waters.

But Bronx swims mostly in the waters near Cape Cod and Nantucket Islands, Johnston says.

Grey seals like Bronx have had a rough history in the region. In the 1800s, humans hunted and killed the entire population living in the Gulf of Maine. For a long time, there were few or no sightings of the animals. But since 1972, grey seals have been protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and are now returning in larger numbers to the shores of what was once their native habitat.

This map shows where a GPS tagged seal, Bronx, has swum since last summer. Image courtesy of Dave Johnston, Duke.

Some Cape Cod locals aren’t too happy about that. The seals come ashore in large groups, disrupting beach access in certain areas, and they leave behind their waste. They get caught up with fishermen’s gear and try to steal their catch, and the seals aren’t the friendliest marine mammals.

“People like dolphins. They tend not to like seals as much,” Johnston says, explaining that grey seals are smart, excellent predators and can be aggressive towards humans. “They can be loud and obnoxious, and they will bite,” he says.

That’s a challenge for both the seals and residents of the Cape Cod.

Part of the tagging effort is to increase people’s understanding of how grey seals interact with the ocean environment surrounding Cape Cod, and it could possibly explain why some of the animals are swimming as far south as the Carolinas.

The team is heading to the Cape Cod in early June to attach tags to seven more grey seals. The goal is ultimately to use the tracking data to improve the relationship between humans and seals there, Johnston says.

Visible Thinking 2013!

April 24th, 2013

By Pranali Dalvi

Students explain their research to peers and faculty at Visible Thinking 2013 in the French Family Science Center. Photo credit: Pranali Dalvi

On April 19, Duke undergrads gathered in the French Family Science Center for Visible Thinking 2013.

The event showcases the exciting research undergraduates are doing in every discipline from the biological sciences to the humanities. For many students, it was also a celebration of several semesters and summers of hard work. Like seasoned scientists, students explained their research to their mentors, peers and prospective Dukies during the annual poster session.

Renata Dinamarco, a Trinity senior, studied the entrepreneurial preparedness of small businesses in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

Renata Dinamarco, Trinity’13. Photo credit: Pranali Dalvi

People are moving to the newer, western front of the city, so the eastern portion of Pembroke Pines is being redeveloped. Many people believed business owners in the east were underprepared as compared to the west when it came to opening small businesses.

When Renata interviewed 55 small business owners, she found that there was no statistical difference between entrepreneurs in the east versus the west. But, she did find that business owners in the east were more likely to view the city government negatively. Renata’s study of the demographics of small business populations is important for making informed policy decisions.

Christine Tsai, Trinity’14. Photo credit: Pranali Dalvi

Junior Christine Tsai studied the expression of gut-specific genes three days after fertilization in zebrafish. In a healthy developing embryo, epithelial cells line the internal organs.

To explore what genes are turned on and off during the development of the cells, Tsai compared gene expression from the gut cells to gene expression of cells from the entire body. Zebrafish have clear embryos that develop quickly, making them easy to study and use as a system to study genetics.

“I plan to continue conducting undergraduate research and know that the techniques and skills I have acquired and continue to develop through my research will further my understanding of processes in cell and molecular biology,” she said.

Ben Finkel, Trinity’13. Photo credit: Pranali Dalvi

For his honors thesis in evolutionary anthropology, Ben Finkel worked in Dr. Brian Hare’s lab combining his interest in education outreach with his passion for conservation. Finkel’s project examines how portrayals of chimpanzees as either aggressive or affiliative can affect our conservation perception. Through his research, Finkel wanted to understand how media steers conservation beliefs. He found that people were less likely to promote conservation of chimanzees if they showed aggressive behaviors rather than affiliative behaviors.

For more from Visible Thinking, check out my video about senior Emily Ngan who studies the brain’s immune system cells and their role in addiction.

Not your typical spring break

April 12th, 2013

By Nonie Arora

Students in front of Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Credit: Bob Cook-Deegan

Seventeen Duke students had a taste of science policy over spring break. We traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with influential scientists and policy makers from a variety of different institutions, from the Genetic Alliance to the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House.

The trip clarified for many of us what science policy is like in action, and the winding paths that guide people to this career.

The students contributed to a trip blog, on which they discuss experiences such as seeing Bo Obama, the First Dog (!), outside the White House and “sipping the kool-aid” of genome science at the National Human Genome Research Institute.

The trip was sponsored by Focus and the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy under the direction of professor Bob Cook-Deegan.

More on Human Evolution This Week

April 8th, 2013

Churchill displays the right hand of the adult female callled MH2. Her arm is complete from fingers to shoulder blade and collar bone.

One of the researchers displays the right hand of the adult female called MH2. Her arm is complete from fingers to shoulder blade and collar bone. Credit: University of Witwatersrand.

By Karl Leif Bates

Followers of the saga of human evolution are in for a treat later this week.

Duke’s Steven Churchill and an international team of colleagues will soon publish the second wave of papers from their analysis of two South African specimens called Australopithecus sediba.

We can’t tell you the details of what’s in the papers just yet because of the journal’s embargo policy, but trust us — it’s pretty cool!

UPDATE 4/12/2013 — The embargo has lifted, so details of the findings and a recorded interview with two of the scientists can be found on the Duke Research site. END UPDATE

At 2 p.m. on Thursday 4/11, you can tune into a Google+ Hangout to hear Churchill and Boston University’s Jeremy DeSilva describe the latest findings and ask your own questions.

Join the Hangout from 2 to 2:30 p.m. http://bit.ly/DukeGooglePlus

This latest round of analysis goes deeper into several areas of the anatomy of the two spectacularly complete A. sediba specimens and turns up some surprises.

~~This blog will also have a more complete report, going live right around that time, so come on back.~~

Two of Churchill’s former undergrad students, 2012 graduates Tawnee Sparling and Kelly Ostrofsky, are among the authors on the new papers. You can hear them talk about their work in this video.

The story of how scientists discovered the two specimens is pretty cool too — CBS Sixty Minutes did a segment on that a couple of years ago. View it here.

And here’s Churchill in a Sept., 2011 segment describing what the specimens are and what they might represent.

Australopithecus sediba – Steve Churchill Sept. 2011

Sharing food beyond the table

April 7th, 2013

By Nonie Arora

Duke Senior Emily McGinty is pioneering an effort to connect campus farms across the country. McGinty, a senior Baldwin Scholar and public policy major from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been passionate about food issues since high school. On campus, she is also actively engaged in Round Table Selective Living Group and Team Kenan, and is the managing editor for Rival magazine.

Emily braids and hangs garlic after harvest to cure it for longer-term use at the Duke Campus Farm. Credit: Emily McGinty

When she was organizing food-related discussions with Nicole Tocco, a former Duke masters student at the Nicholas School of the Environment and current employee of Bon Appetit Management Company, McGinty had a breakthrough about one of the fundamental problems in campus growing communities. “There was no platform for connecting, no hub for sharing best practices and ideas,” McGinty said. She wanted to create a centralized resource that would enable campus growers to communicate best practices in their investigative agricultural work.

McGinty’s underlying inspiration to create this centralized hub for campus farmers and growers comes from her experience helping develop the Duke Campus Farm. While Duke’s campus farm is only two and half years old, it is well established and strongly documents its own agricultural practices and research. Students work with professors and practitioners around the Triangle to investigate problems from crop science to building construction. The Duke Campus Farm community is also committed to intentional community building. McGinty explained, “It’s about developing reciprocal relationships. It’s very much a process – not just ‘making friends.’ But you can call it a professional site visit or hopping over to say hey to a neighbor. We’re all about building a strong community and learning from each other.”

She said she feels privileged to work in an area where sharing ideas has no drawbacks. “A fundamental piece of our desire to create a central hub is that we [campus farmers and gardeners] are in a remarkable situation where we have nothing to lose by sharing business plans. Your average corporation cannot share all their business plans and how they function the way they are, but we only benefit from ideas spreading,” McGinty said. “We can share everything from the structure of our board of advisors to parameters used for growing 500 feet of potatoes.”

Popular sungold tomatoes are packed for the Duke Campus Farm’s trip to market. Credit: Emily McGinty

Her team started by building an online platform where people across several college campuses could become members. They began with an online document, where members could upload their research practices in sustainable agriculture. Since then, they have gone through multiple iterations to find the best online home for the hub, which is still under development.

Over the last 6 months, she has conducted many site visits in North and South Carolina to pitch the idea and ask questions about how the hub would benefit others. One of McGinty’s major goals is to get students outside of the immediately interested food community to plug in. McGinty said she strongly believes that food work is interdisciplinary and undergraduate and graduate student research isn’t shared enough. She hopes that this website will reenergize original work produced by undergraduates relating to food issues.

Ultimately, McGinty hopes this open source philosophy will help campus farms across the country thrive by building communication networks and promoting evidence-based agriculture.

CERN particle ‘a’ Higgs, but not ‘the’ Higgs yet

March 14th, 2013

By Ashley Yeager

This artist’s impression shows a proton-proton collision producing a pair of gamma rays, in yellow, in the ATLAS detector at LHC. Credit: CERN.

Scientists say the particle they described in July 2012 is looking more like a Higgs boson. But they can’t yet say much more than that.

Speaking at the Moriond meeting in Italy, researchers using the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva explained their latest analyses show the new particle’s “spin” matches theorists’ predictions for that feature of the Higgs boson.

Physicists want to find a Higgs boson because it would give them clues to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. Finding one specific flavor of the particle would also complete the Standard Model of particle physics, a system that explains how the smallest particles and forces interact to run the universe.

“The updates show this particle is Standard Model-like, but my personal feeling is we can’t yet call it ‘the’ Standard-Model Higgs,” says Duke physicist Mark Kruse who works on one of the Higgs-hunting experiments at CERN. “For one, we believe the Standard Model is wrong.”

The model, he says, does not predict a candidate for dark matter, a form of mass that scientists can’t yet describe. And, he adds, even if the particle’s characteristics, such as spin, match those of the Standard-Model Higgs, scientists can’t yet rule out other theories that also contain Higgs particles with properties similar to the Standard-Model Higgs.

“All we can really say is that this particle is ‘a’ Higgs boson, but not necessarily ‘the’ Standard-Model Higgs,” Kruse says. “We have a lot more to understand and a lot of future research to acquire that understanding.”

Grad Student Sees Yawning Gap in Animal Welfare

January 18th, 2013

by Ashley Mooney

Sometimes a middle-school nickname becomes a career.

Graduate student Jingzhi Tan, yawned loudly during a quiet class in middle school in China, garnering the nickname Hippo. So now he’s at Duke, studying yawning behaviors in bonobos.

Jingzhi “Hippo” Tan is a graduate student working on bonobos’ love of strangers.

So-called ‘contagious yawning’ has been found in many species besides humans and other great apes, including baboons, monkeys and dogs. Tan found that bonobos are more likely to yawn along with strangers than they are to yawn with animals they already know. (They also prefer to share food with strangers first.) In the future, he hopes to do a similar study with chimpanzees, but must first modify the structure of the experiment.

“The bonobo study that we just did is technically unethical to do with chimps—you can’t put two strange chimps together because they’re going to kill each other,” Tan said. “Later we’re trying to develop a task that is chimp-friendly and we’re going to use it for comparison between a variety of species.”

His studies on great apes, he said, will hopefully reveal more about the human mind and aid wildlife conservation efforts.

Tan noted that there is no better way of understanding the human mind than studying its evolution. Through his studies, Tan hopes to uncover the constraints of human problem-solving abilities, which will help solve problems relating to conservation.

“There is a gap between people who want to conserve nature versus people who are making decisions and policies. Usually what they do is alienate each other,” Tan said. “You can’t actually do something unless you really understand the mind of people.”

Likasi, a resident of the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Kinshasa, where Hippo does his work. (Jingzhi Tan)

As an undergraduate at Peking University, Tan studied under the only cognitive evolution professor in all of China. He is now the first Chinese person to study great apes in Africa.

Tan said he is concerned that chimps are apparently being illegally exported to China, where they end up in the entertainment industry. Tan said there is one reality show that features three chimps—dressed in human clothes—choosing fruit at a supermarket. Another pair of infant chimps were forced into a fake wedding, complete with a wedding dress, and received national media attention.

China needs stronger animal welfare laws, Tan said. “Going back to the big picture, in the next decade, if you want to help bonobos in Africa or any other animals in Africa, we have to get China involved. Right now it’s just completely empty and blank.”

Deeper voice still wins, even in “feminine” leadership roles

December 14th, 2012

By Ashley Yeager

Deeper voices get votes even in PTA and school board elections. Credit: Barton Stabler, gettyimages.com

A lower pitched voice gets more votes — even in elections for stereotypically feminine roles, such as for president of the Parent-Teacher Association or member of the School Board, a new Duke study shows.

“These findings are somewhat surprising,” said University of Miami political scientist Casey Klofstad, co-author on the study. He explained that since women typically hold these kinds of leadership positions, people might assume that voters would prefer leaders with more feminine voices.

“We found the opposite, that the preference for leaders with more masculine voices generally still holds,” he said. The results, which appear Dec. 12 in PLoS ONE, however, suggest that women may want men with more feminine qualities to take feminine leadership positions.

“The selection of leaders is arguably one of the most important decisions we make,” said Duke biologist Rindy Anderson, lead author on the study. “It is worth considering that voice pitch, a physically-determined trait that may or may not be related to leadership capacity, influences how we select our leaders,” she said.

In the experiment, she and Klofstad recorded people saying, “I urge you to vote for me this November,” and then altered the recordings to create high and low-pitched versions of each voice. The scientists then held hypothetical elections by asking people to choose, based solely on voice pitch, which candidate they would prefer when voting for president of the PTA or for a position on the School Board.

The results show that women did not distinguish between men with higher-or lower-pitched voices for the two feminine leadership roles. This finding contradicts the team’s previous study, which identified women’s strong preference for men with more masculine voices when voting for candidates who were “running against each other in an election,” rather than for a specific leadership position. The new finding suggests that the strong preference women had in the previous experiment is more relaxed within the more specific context of feminine leadership roles.

“Another possibility is that women are less sensitive to this vocal cue within the context of this specific domain of leadership. It is also possible that some women might actually prefer male leaders with more feminine voices for feminine leadership roles,” Klofstad said.

The scientists need to do more work to understand what is happening to women’s preferences in this situation, he said, adding that he and Anderson also want to know whether people with lower voices are truly more competent leaders.

“We need to test whether voice pitch actually signals anything about leadership capacity,” Klofstad said. He and Anderson are now designing those experiments.

Citation: “Preference for Leaders with Masculine Voices Holds in the Case of Feminine Leadership Roles.” Anderson, R. and Klofstad, C. 2012. PLOS ONE. 7(12): e51216. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051216.