As part of the CU Mountain Research Station Summer Seminars, Sara Padula will give a talk this Wednesday at the Mountain Research Station. Sara is a Niwot Ridge LTER graduate student and PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at CU Boulder. Her work focuses on the the genetic basis of spatial cognition in local bird species. 

Talk Title: Hide It, find it, survive: The incredible memory of chickadees

Talk Description: Imagine scattering thousands of snacks across a snow-covered forest and months later, remembering exactly where each one is hidden. For chickadees, this isn’t just a challenge, it’s a way of life. These tiny songbirds survive the winter by storing food items around their environment when resources are plentiful and use their incredible spatial memories to find them again. But how do they do it? To unravel this mystery, I combine field experiments with cutting-edge genetic analyses to uncover the genes that contribute to their incredible memory capabilities. By investigating this question, I aim to uncover how memory evolves and how species that depend on it, like chickadees, may adapt to environmental changes brought on by climate change. 

Talk Time/Location: 7PM in the Megatron @ the CU Boulder Mountain Research Station

Learn more about the MRS @ https://www.colorado.edu/mrs/

View upcoming seminars @ https://www.colorado.edu/mrs/current-events/2025-summer-seminar-series