PEOPLE

Dustin Rubenstein

Dustin is currently a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley working in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 2006, where he worked in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior and at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. He finished his undergraduate work at Dartmouth College in 1999. Currently, Dustin studies African starlings at the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, and snapping shrimp in the Florida Keys, USA. He has conducted fieldwork throughout Africa and Central America, as well as in the Galapagos Islands working on birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, and crustaceans.

Wilson Nderitu Watetu

Wilson has been working on the African starling project since 2001. He left for a year and a half in 2006 to complete his Diploma in Wildlife Management at the Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute. He has also been an integral part of many of the collection trips that we conducted across Kenya to collect starlings.

Brynn McCleery

Brynn is a student in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University. She received her undergraduate degree from Cornell in 2006 where she worked on the starling phylogeny and helped develop microsatellites for snapping shrimp. Brynn was part of the Kenya Field Course in Summer 2005 and returned to Kenya in 2007 to work on the African starling project.

Godfrey Manyaas

Godfrey grew up not far from Mpala and began working on the African starling project in March 2007 after graduating from high school.

Gabriel Rana

Gabriel is a tour guide at the Loisaba Ranch in Laikipia, Kenya. He worked on the African starling project from 2003 to 2005 and grew up not far from the Mpala Research Centre.

Research Associates

Tyler Davis

Tyler graduated from Cornell University in 2007, where as an undergraduate he worked in the Department of Natural Resources. He was part of the Kenya Field Course in Summer 2005 and returned to Kenya in 2008 to work on the African starling project.

Lab Alumni

Julius Ronjore

Julius is a tour guide working throughout Kenya. He helped on the African starling project in 2002, the second year of the study.

Rebecca Calisi

Becca is a PhD candidate in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her undergraduate degree at Boston College in 2001, and then a MS at UT Arlington in 2006 studying hormonal mechanisms of coloration in lizards. She is now looking at neural plasticity in European starlings to understand how the size and quantity of neuropeptides associated with reproduction are influenced by the social and ecological environment. Becca is examining neural plasticity in relation to the adoption of different breeding roles in free-living cooperatively breeding superb starlings in Kenya.

Daniel Meliza

Dan is an NIH-NIDCD Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. Dan completed his undergraduate degree at Lewis & Clark College in 1999, and then a PhD in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. He is currently studying the neuronal mechanisms of pattern learning and recognition in the auditory system of European starlings. Dan is examining song in cooperatively breeding superb starlings to understand how song functions in this species, if it might be used for individual recognition, and if it related to social status and different breeding roles.

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