One of the highlights of the annual ABS meetings is the Allee Competition for the best student paper presentation. The student paper competition has been named in honor of Dr. Warder Clyde Allee an early animal behavior researcher who was very influential in the development and direction of animal behavior research in this century. In the Allee competition, 12 to 15 of the outstanding animal behavior students from around the country present the results of their research in 15-minute talks to ABS members and competition judges. Because the talks are often an introduction to the most promising young researchers studying animal behavior, the presentations are well attended and widely discussed.

The W.C. Allee Award for the best student paper presented at the annual meeting was won by Andrew Storfer, University of Kentucky, for a paper entitled "A mechanism for ineffective antipredator behavior in a streambreeding salamander". See more about Andrew's work below.

Honorable mention went to Dorothy Hill, University of Calgary, for a paper entitled "High levels of extrapair paternity and reduced parental care in second broods Chestnutcollared Longspurs".

“My dissertation work involved a unique combination of genetics, population biology, and behavioral ecology. My focal organism was the streamside salamander, Ambystoma barbouri. Larvae of the streamside salamander have conflicting selection pressures in different populations (streams). Some streams support predatory fish, where the optimal behavioral strategy of the larval salamanders is to reduce their activity level and hide under refuges. But, in fishless streams, ephemeral habitats promote increased activity by larval salamanders to feed rapidly in order to metamorphose before the stream dries up. Theoretically, divergent local selection pressures should promote intraspecific diversification. I have found that, in general, larvae from populations with fish respond with behavioral defenses to fish, and larvae from fishless populations are unresponsive. However, salamander larvae from populations with fish differ significantly in the strength and effectiveness of their antipredator response. Specifically, the strength of antipredator behavior in populations with fish is directly related to the genetic isolation of the population from fishless streams. Thus, gene flow between the two habitat 'types' is causing some salamander larvae that coexist with fish to be overactive and suffer high rates of predation. My research is one of a few studies to show that gene flow can act as a constraining evolutionary force in natural populations. To my knowledge, my study was one of the first to investigate the effects of gene flow in multiple populations along a gradient of isolation. My dissertation research was done with the guidance of Dr. Andrew Sih, University of Kentucky.

My current postdoctoral research at Arizona State University is at the interface of population biology and genetics. The main focus of the project is to determine whether genetic variation (in microsatellite DNA) in an endangered subspecies of tiger salamander, Ambystoma tigrinum stebbensi, is correlated with phenotypic variation. Many conservation studies involve an assessment of genetic variation in endangered species. But, because adaptive evolution usually results from changes in continuous phenotypic characters, it is critical to test the assumption that this variation is related to phenotypic variation. I will then use this work to investigate the metapopulation structure and the spread of a recently discovered disease-causing virus in the salamander. I am collaborating with Dr. James Collins, Dr. Betty Davidson and James Jancovitch on this research.”

Other Research Awards:

The Herpetologist's League 1996 Award for Graduate Research. First place in a national competition at the Herpetologist's League annual meeting.

Selected Publications:

Storfer, A. 1996. Quantitative genetics: a promising technique for measuring genetic variation in endangered species. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 11(8): 343-348.

Storfer, A. 1996. Population biology and herpetological conservation: A cautionary note. Amphibian and Reptile Conservation 1: 2022.

Storfer, A. 1995. Conservation biology: Progress or stasis? Conservation Biology 9(5): 982-983.

Email: astorfer@asu.edu

The ABS requests that students who wish to participate in the Warder Clyde Allee Competition at the 1998 Annual Meeting at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale contact Andy Sih, Chair, Allee Judging Committee, for necessary information, guidelines, and deadlines. The Allee Competition requires a (1) short manuscript in Animal Behaviour format and (2) a spoken paper at the annual meeting. Both must address the same piece of student research. In order to compete, the ABS recommends that information be requested by 15 November, 1997.

Contact Andy Sih,
Center for Ecology, Evolution and Behavior,
University of Kentucky,
Lexington, KY 405060225.
Email: andy@darwin.ceeb.uky.edu.