Daniel Montalvo is recently returned from his native Ecuador where he studies changes in bird community composition along an extreme precipitation gradient. He and Ordway Lab Director Dr. Scott Robinson documented over 220 species in 15 protected areas ranging from dry forests near the Peru border to humid forests near Colombia. They observed a complete change in the composition of bird communities, a phenomenon ecologists refer to as species or community turnover. He’ll be spending the coming year doing preliminary analyses and planning for the next field season in 2017.

Daniel conducting an early morning census in tropical dry forest.

Scott checking out the bird community in humid forest.