What we can learn from sparrows and starlings
To some people, house sparrows and European starlings are cute little birds. To others, they are invasive species that compete with native birds like Eastern bluebirds for nesting sites. To us, they are an invaluable resource that allows us to improve our understanding of the impacts of stress on animals and humans.
The focus of our research is to understand how different neurotransmitters and hormones help wild animals successfully cope with challenges from predators to disease. The hormone and neurotransmitter pathways we study are very similar in in all vertebrates from fish to birds to mammals, so sparrow and starling research can help us understand how these systems work in humans and other animals.
Lab News
Congrats to undergraduate researcher Kenedi Lynch, who defended her Senior Honors Thesis in the lab on tissue-specific cytokine responses to avian malaria. It has been a joy and a privilege for us all to work with Kenedi over the past 4 years. She exemplifies undergraduate research at its best!
April 2024
March 2024
Congratulations to Melanie Kimball, who successfully defended her PhD from the Lattin Lab on the effects of environmental perturbations on house sparrow neurobiology and behavior! We are all so proud of our new Dr. Kimball, and can’t wait to see what she does next!
Melanie Kimball gives her dissertation defense talk on her PhD research in the Lattin Lab.
Melanie and spouse Ben Toups (also a new PhD from the Brown lab at LSU!) celebrate their accomplishment with chocolate cake.
March 2024
Dr. Lattin presents about the lab’s neophobia research at ISAE 2024 in Meerut, India.
Dr. Lattin attended the 2024 International Symposium on Avian Endocrinology in Meerut, India, and presented some of the lab’s recent work on neophobia in house sparrows. She had a great time hearing about new developments in the field of avian endocrinology and meeting scientists from all over the world!
March 2024
Dr. Lattin has been selected to receive a 2024 Emerging Scholar Rainmaker Award in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics! Each year, six Rainmakers are selected by the Louisiana State University Council on Research based on outstanding scholarship, creative activity, and work with impacts on the academic community and beyond.
February 2024
Dr. Lattin was a co-guest-editor (with Dr. Richmond Thompson and Dr. Yvon Delville) of a special issue of the journal Hormones and Behavior on Contributions of comparative approaches to behavioral neuroendocrinology. The full issue can be found here, and the introduction to the special issue, which argues that biodiversity matters in the lab, can be found here.
January 2024
Several members of the Lattin Lab attended and presented work at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology held in Seattle, Washington. Overall, lab members presented two posters and three talks at the meeting, and also found time for a quick hike in Seattle’s Discovery Park. Undergraduate Kenedi Lynch was awarded second prize for Best Student Poster in the Division of Ecoimmunology and Disease Ecology.
Lattin Lab members on a hike at Seattle's Discovery Park.
Lattin Lab undergraduate researcher Kenedi Lynch with her (award winning!) poster on her Senior Honors Thesis research at the 2024 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in Seattle, Washington.
Lattin Lab PhD student Keegan Stansberry presents a poster on one of his dissertation projects at the 2024 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in Seattle, Washington.
Dr. Lattin’s new review paper with Farrah Madison, Vern Bingman, and Tom Smulders on the avian hippocampus is now online from Hormones and Behavior! There is still much to learn about this brain region, especially in regards to its anatomy and stress & anxiety functions. This article is part of a special issue of Hormones and Behavior on “Contributions of comparative approaches to behavioral neuroendocrinology.”
November 2023
October 2023
Our new paper led by postdoctoral researcher Dr. Tosha Kelly shows that individual variation in glucocorticoid hormones does not predict avian malaria infection outcomes, but corticosterone negative feedback strengthens in infected sparrows.
August 2023
Two new students joined the lab this month! The lab’s new PhD student, Marquise Henry, was awarded the LSU Graduate School’s prestigious Huel D. Perkins Fellowship, and Emily Stelling is a post baccalaureate researcher through the NSF RaMP funded LAGNiAppE program! Welcome Marquise and Emily!
August 2023
Keegan Stansberry presents a project from his PhD research at the 2023 American Ornithological Society / Society of Canadian Ornithologists joint meeting in London, Ontario, Canada.
Lab Postdoctoral Researcher Dr. Tosha Kelly and PhD student Keegan Stansberry presented research at the annual meeting of the American Ornithological Society, which this year was a joint meeting with the Society of Canadian Ornithologists and held in London, Ontario, Canada. They presented new work from the lab on the effects of parasites on birds, and enjoyed meeting scientists from the USA, Canada, and beyond!
August 2023
Vet student Meridith Helms-Pack presents a poster on her summer research project in the Lattin Lab at the Veterinary Scholars Symposium meeting in Puerto Rico.
LSU Veterinary Student Meridith Helms-Pack presented a poster on the summer research project she conducted in the Lattin Lab at the annual Veterinary Scholars Symposium meeting in Puerto Rico, August 3-5, 2023. She had a lively crowd and lots of interest from other attendees on possible ways to reduce stress in avian patients in a clinical setting.
July 2023
Dr. Lattin and PhD student Melanie Kimball presented neophobia research at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Portland, Oregon. This was a great chance to hear about new work in the field of behavior and connect with colleagues!
PhD student Melanie Kimball gives a research presentation at the 2023 Animal Behavior Society meeting in Portland, Oregon.
Dr. Lattin gives a research presentation at the 2023 Animal Behavior Society meeting in Portland, Oregon.
July 2023
When it comes to an animal's response to novelty, context matters! The lab’s new paper in Behavioural Brain Research by PhD student Melanie Kimball and Dr. Lattin demonstrates that a fearful response towards novel objects is not correlated with exploration of a novel environment in house sparrows.
Graph showing house sparrow latency to feed with a novel object on the x axis and latency to enter a novel environment on the y axis. The two are not correlated.
Female house sparrows exposed to breeding levels of estrogen decrease their brain responses to neutral sounds relative to the song of males of their own species, but they do NOT decrease brain responses to predator sounds. Our new paper out now in Frontiers in Physiology was the Senior Honors Thesis work of LSU undergraduate student, Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher, and Ronald E. McNair Fellow Courtney Harding! PhD student Melanie Kimball helped mentor Courtney and revised her thesis for publication; undergraduate Kaitlin Couvillion, postdoc Dr. Tosha Kelly, and PhD student Keegan Stansberry also collaborated on this project.
June 2023
June 2023
2023 Goldwater Scholar and Astronaut Scholar Kenedi Lynch, who studies avian malaria as an Undergraduate Researcher in the Lattin Lab.
Lab undergraduate researcher Kenedi Lynch has received 2023 Goldwater and Astronaut Scholarships, two prestigious awards that seek to identify, encourage, and financially support students of exceptional promise in STEM fields. Other than her research on avian malaria in the Lattin Lab, as a 2022 Amgen Fellow Kenedi also spent last summer doing research at Johns Hopkins University on devices that could be used to monitor blood antibiotic levels in human patients. Congratulations Kenedi!
May 2023
Congratulations to Riley Noble, who successfully defended her Senior Honors Thesis from the lab and graduated this spring! Riley and Ayushi Patel, another Spring 2023 graduate, also received Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher awards. Congratulations Riley and Ayushi!
Undergraduate lab member Riley Noble receives her Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher award from the LSU Discover program.
Undergraduate lab member Ayushi Patel receives her Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher award from the LSU Discover program.
May 2023
Lattin Lab PhD student Melanie Kimball, who recently received funding from LSU and the P.E.O. Scholars program to fund her final year of dissertation research.
PhD student Melanie Kimball received a P.E.O. Scholar Award and LSU Dissertation Year Fellowship to fund the final year of her dissertation research. This funding will allow Melanie to focus on research and prepare for post-doctoral job interviews. Congratulations Melanie!
April 2023
Undergraduate researchers Riley Noble and Kenedi Lynch gave talks and Raedan Stephens and Ayushi Patel presented posters at the LSU Discover Day undergraduate research conference highlighting their research from the lab. Everyone did an amazing job!
Lattin Lab member Raedan Stephens presents a poster on using RFID systems to study the behavior of free-living European starlings at LSU Discover Day.
Dr. Lattin congratulates lab members Kenedi Lynch and Riley Noble on their excellent talks at LSU Discover Day.
Dr. Lattin has received a 5 year CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation to further investigate the role of the hippocampus in neophobia behavior (a fearful response towards new things), and to develop a new Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) lab using data from these projects. More information on this award can be found here.