Summer Fellowships

Fellowship Opportunities for Summer 2024

Note: Every summer fellow will, over the course of the summer, design and conduct an independent component of their research in complement with the project they have applied to work on. They will present this independent component as a poster at the President's Summer Research Symposium in October.

Bowdoin Scientific Station Artist-in-Residence

Artists are a critical link between science and the non-science world, and their different perspective can directly impact and inform scientific research. The BSS Artist in Residence will focus on the intersection between art and science in the medium they choose (including but not limited to: drawing, painting, printmaking, writing, poetry, music, film-making etc). The Artist in Residence will work alongside scientists for each ecological research project on Kent Island to explore how art can bring new perspectives and insights to understanding the natural world, and can be an important tool for communicating science and/or current environmental topics. The artist will spend time in the field with each of the research projects at the station. The Artist in Residence will be expected not only to bring a unique perspective but also to be a central member of the Kent Island community.

Education & Research: Curriculum Development for Communities and Classrooms

Classrooms from elementary school through high school increasingly are looking for real datasets that students can use to learn math and science standards including ecological and evolutionary concepts, and how to visualize, analyze, interpret and communicate data. The fellow will create curricula and resources for middle school grades (6-8) based on the long-term petrel dataset at the station. The fellow will work closely with scientific researchers to create materials that can be used by teachers and other educators to communicate core concepts. This project is ideal for a student interested in a career in science education with the goal of creating curriculum that will be made accessible to science teachers and community educators in Maine and New Brunswick. Preference will be for Education majors.

Pollination of Wild Low-Bush Blueberry

Kent Island is covered in low-bush blueberry which blooms from May into July. Kent Island is unusual in contrast to Maine’s wild and agricultural low-bush blueberry because there are no introduced honeybees or other managed pollinators on Kent Island. In addition, herbicides and insecticides have not been used on Kent Island for at least 60 years. This provides the opportunity to study the natural community of pollinators on blueberry, and the effectiveness of different pollinators for fruit production. The fellow will survey the pollinator community (requires behavioral observation in the field and learning to identify insects using keys and a microscope), and will measure pollen deposition to blueberry flowers through seed set of fruit. This research has applications for sustainable agriculture and bee conservation.

Learning and Memory in Bees and Other Pollinators (2 fellows)

Learning of colors and scents is important for many pollinators in the wild because it enables them to forage efficiently by learning which flowers provide the most or highest quality nectar. While it is known that honeybees and bumblebees are excellent learners, little is known about the learning abilities of other pollinators such as solitary bees, wasps, and hover flies (bee mimicking flies). This fellow will use a newly developed method called “Free-Moving Proboscis Extension Response” to conduct behavioral experiments on learning and memory abilities of wild pollinators. This fellowship will make an important contribution to research on the evolution of learning and memory in groups of pollinating insects.

Long-Term Population Monitoring Of The Leach’s Storm-Petrel: The Impacts Of Climate Change And Other Environmental Factors (2 fellows)

Leach’s storm-petrels are long-lived seabirds (the longest recorded on Kent Island lived to be 37 years old!) that forage far out to sea. They nest in burrows that they dig on offshore islands like Kent Island that do not have mammalian predators. The male and female share parental duties and raise just one chick per year. Storm-petrels are very vulnerable to climate change and environmental disturbance. The storm-petrel population on Kent Island has been monitored continuously since the 1950’s. This has created an extremely unique dataset on long-term trends in a wild animal population. The fellows will monitor the population including mapping burrow locations, searching burrows for actively nesting birds, and banding, measuring, and collecting blood samples from any captured birds. Nests will be monitored over the entirety of the summer to determine hatch success of chicks and to weigh and measure chicks. These fellowships have important implications for studying the impacts of climate change on a animal that is an indicator for ecosystem health and productivity of fisheries.

Forest Regeneration and Health

Much of Kent Island is covered in spruce/fir forest. In the 1960’s snowshoe hares were introduced to the island and until they were eradicated in 2008 they decimated seedling trees and prevented forest regeneration. In the time since 2008 the forests of Kent Island have begun to regenerate. This provides a unique opportunity to study forest regeneration in a habitat with minimal anthropogenic influences. This fellow will conduct an extensive tree survey and plant of the island, measuring trees of all species and successional stages. In addition, the fellow will conduct GIS mapping of different forest and habitat types for the entire island. This project has important implications for understanding forest dynamics, ecosystem health, and how forests respond to release from herbivory.

Ecology of Intertidal Invertebrates and Algae

Kent Island has 30 foot (10 meter) tidal cycles and extraordinary intertidal diversity. This fellowship is an opportunity for a student who has taken either Biology of Marine Organisms (BIOL 2319) or the Marine Science Semester/Coastal Studies Semester to conduct an independent research project on intertidal ecology. This fellow does not need to be a rising senior but for the Project Selection part of the application should write about what type of project they would like to do including a plan for what their work will entail both during low tide and between tidal cycles. It is recommended that the applicant look through the publication list for Kent Island and previous annual reports for ideas of projects and meet with Director Patty Jones to discuss planning. 

Population Dynamics in Savannah Sparrows

Savannah sparrows are a migratory songbird that have been studied on Kent Island since the 1980’s. They breed on Kent Island in the summer and migrate to the Southeastern US in the winter. The Kent Island population of savannah sparrows is high unusual in comparison to mainland populations in how faithful birds are in returning to Kent Island every summer. This fidelity allows researchers to study long-term population dynamics, migration behavior, and song learning in this species. This fellow will work with researchers (both faculty and graduate students) from the University of Guelph and the University of Windsor to research the behavior of savannah sparrows. This research involves very early mornings (5 am start every day), and the fellow must be prepared to commit to this schedule. The fellow’s activities include searching for nests, recording birdsong, mistnetting for birds, and banding and bleeding captured adults and nestlings. This is a unique fellowship in the extent that it enables the fellow to work alongside faculty and graduate students from large research universities. This research has important implications for understanding the effects of a changing climate on migratory behavior, population dynamics, and for understanding the evolution of song learning.

Life-history of Leach's storm-petrels

This fellow will work alongside researchers on a newly funded National Science Foundation grant to study the foraging efficiency and reproductive effort of Leach's storm-petrels. To do this work the fellow will aid in installing load-cell weigh bridges in burrows to weigh petrels entering and exiting burrows, and applying GPS tags to petrels to determine distances travelled at sea. This fellow will work on building and trouble-shooting arduino-platform electronics to monitor petrels at burrows and collecting and managing SD cards with large datasets. Preference is for a student with some computer science or R coding background who is interested in engineering applications in biology. This research is an exciting new direction on Kent Island using novel technology to understand the evolution of life-history traits.