Stories from an Egg

Regardless of which came first, an egg can tell us a lot about the bird it came from and what the world was like when it was laid. The Research Using Museum Collections Creative Inquiry project, led by Dr. Virginia Abernathy and Melissa Fuentes from the Department of Biological Sciences, works with Clemson University’s Bob & Betsy Campbell Museum of Natural History to gather information on shorebird egg clutches and answer questions about the effects of climate change on these species.

Shorebirds have long bills and stick-like legs designed for wading in oceans and freshwater bodies. With more than 50 species of shorebirds across North America, the Creative Inquiry team decided to concentrate on three threatened species—the Eastern willet, the black-necked stilt and the Wilson’s plover. “Shorebirds are long-distance migrants that typically nest along the coastline, making them vulnerable to rising ocean levels, hurricanes and changes in timing of food availability during their breeding season. Additionally, none of these species are in the same family, or taxonomic grouping, so they aren’t that closely related. This helps ensure that any results we find aren’t due to similarities in evolutionary history,” Abernathy said.

In the museum, each clutch, or group of eggs laid in the same nest, has a card that includes the bird’s common and scientific names, a description of its nest, incubation status and collection date and location. “Some information is typed on a formal template, and others are just written on little snippets of paper with holes in them. Sometimes the handwriting is so hard to read, but we try to help each other out and decipher it together,” Abby Good, a junior wildlife biology major, said. Fuentes, the museum’s curator, works with the Creative Inquiry students on proper scientific photography techniques and classification of the museum’s clutch collection. Students catalog the egg photos and collection data in an online database which will be accessible to the public when it is complete. With approximately 3,000 clutch cards to file, this can be a long and tedious task for students.

Though the curation process is daunting, the team is excited to use the data to answer their research question. “We are analyzing if there is a relationship between temperature, precipitation and nest initiation. We’ve already seen that climate affects nest initiation in other studies, so we’re testing our three vulnerable species within these variables,” Gabriella ‘Gabi’ Pulsifer, a senior biology major, said. By referencing the clutch cards, the Creative Inquiry team will be able to see if nest initiation correlates with changes in climate over time.

Shorebirds are considered indicator species—animals that offer insight into the overall health and function of an ecosystem. “If climate has a significant impact on bird species, it could impact so many other things in the world, including us humans,” Autum Blanchard, a senior environmental and natural resources major, said. The Creative Inquiry team hopes their findings will paint a clearer picture of how climate impacts bird nesting.

Tucked between Jordan Hall and Long Hall at Clemson, the Bob & Betsy Campbell Museum of Natural History may be a small building, but it has a big impact. “With our research and digitizing efforts, we’re taking an asset that Clemson has and making it [more] known to the public,” Abernathy said. The Creative Inquiry team looks forward to inviting the public to access and learn from their online catalog of shorebird eggs.