PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

GRADUATE STUDENTS

We are interested in accepting graduate students who want to broadly pursue any of the research topics in the lab. Preferred candidates have a strong background in natural history to be able to apply that skill to collecting field data particular to our questions and approaches. While many students join the lab wanting to have field experiences, embracing a holistic approach to developing and learning new skillsets is essential for your success.

These skills include: reading the scientific literature to enrich your work, coding, understanding and applying basic statistical approaches for your research, writing and being able to present your results to both colleagues and the public. If 1) this sounds like you 2) you have read over some of the papers from our lab (see Research/Publications pages) and the topics interest you, then please reach out about potential graduate opportunities in the lab!.

Please read the following expectations of conduct and what to expect from me as a mentor here. When reaching out please send me an email with:

A cover letter outlining who you are, your basic and applied interests, the kind of project you might want to do in graduate school, and your short- and long-term career goals.
A CV summarizing work and academic experience, including your GPA.
A writing sample (~250 words) describing the type of project that you would like to pursue based on the research topics that our lab pursues. This does not mean you will be bound to said project, but would allow us to see how well you assimilate ideas based upon our labs research focus.

Funding:

At UC Santa Cruz, graduate students are primarily supported through a combination of Teaching Assistantships (TAs), Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) positions, and competitive campus fellowships. Funding packages vary by student, but most students receive multi-year support through a mix of these sources.

UCSC offers a range of prestigious fellowships for incoming and continuing students, including Cota-Robles Fellowships, Chancellor’s Fellowships, Graduate Division Fellowships, and other merit-based awards. Students are also encouraged to apply for external funding sources such as the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) and other national or international fellowships.

Overall, graduate students in our lab typically receive support through a combination of departmental TAs, GSRs funded by grants, and internal or external fellowships.

Come to learn with Us in the forest!

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

We have undergraduate research opportunities both locally and internationally in the lab and are happy to talk with any interested students. In most cases if you are just trying to get your feet wet, we will plug you in to help with an existing project run by a graduate student.

For students who want to continue on, we can offer independently run projects under lab supervision. You can get in touch with Ari Martínez or any other member of the lab. When reaching out to me by email please send:

A cover letter describing yourself, your basic and applied interests, the level of involvement you might want in the lab (just hands on experience or independent study), your short- and long-term career goals, and how the research our lab pursues will help you achieve these goals
A CV summarizing work and academic experience (including relevant coursework and your GPA)

Funding

At UC Santa Cruz, undergraduate students can participate in research in several ways. While most positions in our lab begin as volunteer or for-credit experiences, UCSC offers multiple programs that provide stipends, scholarships, or paid research opportunities for students who wish to deepen their involvement.

The campus supports undergraduate researchers through competitive programs such as the Undergraduate Research Fellowships (URF), STARS, McNair Scholars, CAMINO, and various summer research opportunities across departments and research units. These programs can provide financial support while students work on projects aligned with our lab’s research.

Overall, UCSC offers a robust structure for undergraduates to grow as researchers, whether they are seeking their first field experience or aiming to develop an independent project.

Are you curious about birds and want real research experience?This is for you !

Current Projects

Join our team and learn how science happens in the field and beyond! No specific experience needed just curiosity, commitment, and excitement to learn. You’ll gain hands-on field skills, data analysis experience, and the opportunity to contribute to scientific publications.

Evaluating the dynamics of overwintering flocks in a Coastal sagescrub bird community.

In the temperate zone, mixed-species flocks form in winter in a variety of habitats, yet their social organization has been described in disproportionately few systems. We are in the process of quantifying the social organization of mixed species groups in a Coastal Sagescrub habitat by quantifying the species composition of flocks over time and the potential home ranges that such groups might establish. Do winter flocks have consistent and stable compositions of species across space and time? We have color-banded a number of birds of several species of sparrows that are currently overwintering in the sagescrub habitat of the coastal campus. We are currently in the process of documenting range patterns and and species composition of these groups several mornings a week on established routes within the Younger Lagoon Reserve of Coastal Campus. Applicant skills and duties : This project requires individuals to have a solid background in: 1. Bird identification and the use of binoculars as it will require the identification of individual color bands of birds. 2. Students will also learn to use GPS units as we attempt to track bird home ranges. 3. We are looking for students to commit to several mornings a week to collecting data on these groups and updating and maintaining our database.

Structure and organization of mixed-species flocks along a disturbance gradient

Mixed-species flocks (MSFs) are groups of birds that include two or more species foraging together and are often used as a model system to study how species interactions may vary over time and across different areas within biological communities. Some mixed flocks move collectively through habitats, while others remain in one place, often congregating around a localized food source, such as a tree with berries. Typically, one species acts as a ‘leader’ or ‘nuclear’ species usually a loud passerine with multiple individuals that often decides the flocks direction. MSFs serve as a key indicator of how species interactions may change because of human impacts. Despite their importance, there has been little research on how MSFs change across environmental gradients. Thus, this project aims to characterize the species composition of bird communities across various forested landscapes at different levels of conservation and to describe MSFs within different bird communities. To assess the bird community and MSF variation, we will use transect surveys located in protected forests (control) and in areas impacted by wildfire where the vegetation is recovering. Applicant Skills and duties 1. Basic knowledge about the songbirds found in the Santa Cruz area (the lab provides a memorizing tool to improve ID skills). 2. Good at taking detailed notes in the field. 3. Willing to learn survey methodology in the field. 4. Experience in using Excel to input data. 5. Commitment to assist with the survey of 26 transects (500 m) every quarter. 6. Learn to ID a subset of the most common bird species found in the sampled sites. 7. Input the dataset collected in the field.

Data Analysis Project: Amazonian Flock Movements

Project description: Dr. Martinez has spent years in deep in Amazonia with armies of field technicians meticulously recording the movements of entire Mixed-Species Flocks (MSFs). With multiple years of sunrise-to-sunset continuous observations (>15,000 observations), we can answer some fundamental questions: do MSFs use the same routes each day (each week, each year)? How does flock movement vary with flock size and composition? How do emergent MSF-level characteristics (e.g. collective niche breadth, phylogenetic diversity) shape movement trajectories? Prerequisites: 1. Curiosity 2. Willingness to learn data wrangling, graphing, and statistical analysis in R. Emphasis on spatial data, movement ecology, data synthesis/work with macroecological trait databases.

Dr. Martinez and Allene Henderson (M.S.) spent two seasons in the Peruvian Amazon, studying the communication networks of birds that live in Mixed Species Flocks (MSFs). With robotic predator models of ground and aerial threats they startled species in MSFs into emitting context-specific alarm calls (that paper is in submission). She also took some of those alarm calls, remixed them to have variable call numbers, and played them back to individual birds and recorded their reactions. This dataset of these call-specific reactions can be used to ask questions about the “meaning” of these alarm calls that are produced only in specific contexts: when birds hear an alarm call elicited by an aerial predator, do they fly up and away, or drop and freeze? To what extent does alarm call number convey information about the urgency of a threat? Prerequisites: 1. Curiosity 2. Willingness to learn data wrangling, graphing, and statistical analysis in R. 3. Emphasis on behavioral data, experimental design, and mixed-effect models. Intermediate statistical knowledge preferred.

Data Analysis Project: Individual Responses to Referential Alarm Calls

Data Analysis Project:
Flock Responses to Referential Alarm Calls

Dr. Martinez and Allene Henderson (M.S.) spent two seasons in the Peruvian Amazon, studying the communication networks of birds that live in Mixed Species Flocks (MSFs). With robotic predator models of ground and aerial threats they startled species in MSFs into emitting context-specific alarm calls (that paper is in submission). The Peruvian field team then conducted a follow-up experiment to see how the whole community of forest birds respond to MSF-alarm calls when they are broadcast into the forest. With point counts, they surveyed the avian community before, during, and after alarm-call playbacks, noting species presence, abundance, and how close individuals approached. This dataset of these call-specific reactions can be mined to ask questions about the meaning of these alarm calls: which birds show up or disappear when they hear alarm calls? How does species abundance change? Which species come closer or move further away? What functional traits explain different species’ reactions? Prerequisites: 1. Curiosity 2. Willingness to learn data wrangling, graphing, and statistical analysis in R. 3. Emphasis on behavioral data, experimental design, mixed-effect models, and data synthesis/work with macroecological trait databases. 4. Intermediate statistical knowledge preferred.

Telemetry as a complementary too to understand
Chickadees Flocks and the change behaviour over time

Since 2026, we have been working with five chickadee groups in Santa Cruz, using radio tags to track individuals in the forest. Our goal is to understand their behavior, movement patterns, and both intra- and interspecific interactions. In the field, we use a telemetry antenna to locate tagged birds. When the signal beeps, we know an individual is nearby, allowing us to follow its movements and behavior in real time. Currently, three students are developing independent research projects: Kemi: How does chickadee group size affect home range size? Enrique: How do resource availability and predation influence the spatial distribution of chickadees? Oscar: How does the onset of the breeding season affect home range use? If you are interested in joining our work, we are looking for people with the following skills and motivations: 1. Ability to identify local bird species. 2. Willingness to conduct fieldwork early in the morning and late in the day. 3. Availability for ~6 hours of fieldwork following groups. 4. Interest in learning how to use telemetry equipment. 5. Interest in developing skills in statistics and programming in R. 6. Curiosity and enthusiasm for learning.

One of the main goals of the Forest Fear Lab is to investigate how birds in mixed-species flocks respond to immediate predation threats. To study this, our team deploys a model decoy painted as bird of prey to simulate an attack scenario. By documenting behavioral responses and recording the alarm calls produced during these encounters, we build a detailed library of anti- predator vocal signals across species in the flocking community. Skills required: 1. Bird identification 2. Commitment to go early to look for birds 3. Well use managing GPS

Predation Trials

Playback Experiments

As a continuum of the Predation Trials and to understand how anti-predator information spreads through bird communities, we use playback experiments with alarm calls recorded during trials. By broadcasting these alarms to other individuals and species, we test how different listeners interpret and respond to the signals, whether by increasing vigilance, joining mobbing responses, fleeing, or altering foraging behavior. This work helps reveal how mixed-species flocks function as communication networks and how species rely on one another for information relevant to their survival.

We also use Spot Mapping, which is a classic breeding-season survey method in order to estimate bird territories and local density across our study sites. Observers repeatedly map individual birds, noting locations, behaviors (e.g., singing, foraging, etc.), and interactions over multiple visits. These detailed spatial and behavioral records allow us to delineate and estimate their territories and also to track patterns of space use with precision, often using digital mapping tools to improve accuracy and efficiency. We are currently applying this approach to quantify Song Sparrow territories, with plans to expand to additional focal species in the community.