Costly Care and Cooperation in an Uncertain World

In the sixth episode of the fall season, Dr. Sarah Guindre-Parker and Dr. Glenn Young were the featured faculty from the College of Science and Mathematics, who joined KSU in fall 2019. Dr. Guindre-Parker is an assistant professor of biology in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, and Dr. Glenn Young is an assistant professor of mathematics in the Department of Mathematics. 

They discussed their interdisciplinary project focused on how animals – in this case superb starlings of east Africa – cope with challenges in their environment. The researchers are studying how the superb starlings use the arrangement of cooperative breeding in which animals come together to help raise offspring that are not their own.

As an integrative behavioral ecologist, Dr. Guindre-Parker studies how European starlings cope with changing environments on both surface and cellular levels through their breeding, their behavior or their physiology. Shortly after arriving in Georgia, she established a colony of nest boxes at the KSU Field Station to monitor behavior and reproductive success of these birds.  She earned a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Columbia University. 

As an applied mathematician, Dr. Young's research areas of interest include mathematical ecology and evolutional game theory with most of his work inspired by biology. His research is largely concerned with the development and analysis of mathematical models that capture and make accessible important aspects of physical systems. He earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh. 

Learn more about Dr. Sarah Guindre-Parker and Dr. Glenn Young!