Olivia Stein
Research Mentor(s): Hengxing Zou
Mentor Department: School for Environment and Sustainability
Authors:
Session: Session 3 (11:00am – 11:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 31
Abstract
Mixed-species flocks are not uncommon, but what families of birds are most likely to form mixed-species flocks? This study pulls data from eBird from January 2019 to January 2024 in Michigan. Then, this dataset of observations is run through an AI model to detect signs of different species interacting. The observations containing interactions between different species are then individually analyzed to find observations of mixed-species flocks. These narrowed-down observations can then be used to categorize the families of the birds flocking together to find which families are more likely to flock together. I hypothesize that the results of this study will conclude that the species that flock together are typically from the same family, but it is currently unknown whether there are specific families of birds that form mixed-species flocks more often than other families of birds. This study is a smaller piece of a larger project aiming to categorize interactions between different bird species. Having information about the specific families of birds that are more likely to flock together or information about birds belonging to different families flocking together would be crucial to forming a better understanding of bird behavior and interactions between species. This study could also lead to future studies of the same concept, but with emphasis on different geographical regions around the world, as this study only covers Michigan.
