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Hans Gonzembach
Marcelo was my mentor during the OTS's REU program at La Selva Biological Station in 2019. We worked on a project trying to understand the effect of environmentally driven sound degradation in shaping the cultural evolution of songs in Long-billed Hermit hummingbirds. These birds are able to learn their song from neighbors and new song types are found within a lek almost every year. However, most song types "survived" for only a couple years while a few are able to stay for 5 or more years. So we tested the hypothesis that the transmission properties of the song types determined their "lifespan". More specifically, we were trying to determine if the lifespan of a song type was affected by how much it degraded in its natural habitat, expecting an association between short song type lifespans and higher degradation. This project is still in process. I currently study at the University of Massachusetts- Boston and my major is in Environmental Science. I am also a research technician for Tufts University's Department of Developmental Biology.
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Virgilio Lopez III
I participated in OTS’s REU program at La Selva Biological Station over the Summer of 2015. During the program I worked with Marcelo on a project investigating the cognitive abilities of Long-billed Hermit hummingbirds. We published the results of this project in the journal Scientific Reports in 2018. Following the program I received both my B.S. and M.S. from the University of Connecticut in Molecular and Cell Biology and Exercise Physiology, respectively. Currently, I work as a Research Assistant in a neuroscience lab at Brown University where we study the development of neural circuits and the effect of the external environment on the growth of these circuits.
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