Program Meeting - UNR House Wren Research Study

September Program: Mechanistic underpinnings of reproductive behavior in urban environments

Breeding in different environments brings both benefits and challenges. Certain species, such as northern house wrens (Troglodytes aedon), are able to reproduce and thrive across a wide range of environments, from relatively pristine natural habitats to suburban areas within cities. However, differences among these environments, particularly in resource availability, can directly affect the behavioral and physiological strategies that parents and offspring use during reproduction. Although many studies have compared species living under different environmental conditions, we still know relatively little about how environmental variation shapes behavioral and physiological traits among populations of the same species, even for common and widespread species such as northern house wrens. During my PhD, I investigated how offspring and parents adjust their behavior and physiology to different environmental conditions, with a particular focus on variation in food availability. In this talk, I will first show how offspring adjust their begging behavior in response to environmental conditions and food supplementation, and explore how physiological mechanisms, particularly corticosterone, are associated with these behavioral responses. I will then focus on parents, examining how environmental conditions influence parental provisioning and reproductive strategies, including the decision of one parent to desert the brood. My main goal is to show how environmental variation can shape multiple components of parental-offspring and adult male-female interactions, going from offspring signaling to parental investment, and ultimately influencing how animals adjust their reproductive strategies to changing environments.

About the Speaker: My name is Ivan C. C. Provinciato. I am a biologist with a master’s degree in Zoology, and I was born and raised in Brazil. Although I have deep roots in urban environments, it was not necessarily the cityscape that caught my attention, but rather the non-human animals that shared this space with me, especially birds. I have always been intrigued by how certain species are able to find food and shelter, build their nests, reproduce, and ultimately thrive amid the challenges and constant disturbance of urban environments. This curiosity eventually became the foundation of my research. Since my master’s, I have focused on understanding the behavioral and physiological traits that allow certain species to persist across environments with very distinct selective pressures. I am particularly interested in those common bird species that we are able encounter in our neighborhood parks and backyards, because their apparent familiarity can hide remarkable behavioral and physiological flexibility. Through my research, I aim to understand how these animals adjust to distinct environments and what allows some species to successfully live alongside us in a world that is constantly changing.

Registration opens 8/23/26

Photo of a Northern House Wren by Keegan Smith Nichols