Welcome to the American Ornithological Society 2018 Annual Conference. We are pleased to have you join us at the lovely Hilton El Conquistador Resort in Tucson, AZ.
Here, I present a four-hour laboratory exercise suitable for either an ornithology or a comparative animal physiology course. In it, students use calorimetry to measure the energy contained in several different food items. They then observe House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) selecting food items to determine whether or not birds preferentially select the most energy-dense food items. Depending on how it is presented, this lab can teach students about optimal foraging, feeding energetics, essential nutrients (i.e., that birds eat for reasons other than obtaining energy), individual variation in feeding strategies, and basic statistics (importance of multiple samples, Chi-square and ANOVA). I will discuss solutions to problems I have encountered while performing this lab in the past as well as the permissions necessary to perform the experiment.
