Student Presentation Awards

Awards are given to promote student participation at the Society’s meetings and to recognize excellence in the presentation of posters and papers (evaluative criteria used in judging for oral and poster presentations).

These awards are presented at the annual meeting.

2023 Awards

  • Best Student Poster Award: Will Jackson & Kyla Ebersol, Understanding tern talk: Characterization and context of Common Tern calls at breeding colonies

  • Student Poster Award – Honorable Mention: Autumn Pauly, Should I Stay or Should I Go Now: The effect of site fidelity on breeding success of the Leach’s Storm Petrel

  • Best Student Presentation Award: Sonja Barber, Larid ectoparasite and microbial community dynamics associated with Avian Botulism

  • Student Presentation Award – Honorable Mention: Christopher Gulick, What can spatial networks tell us about wading birds in the coastal Gulf of Mexico?

  • Outstanding Contribution to Conservation Student Presentation: Aylett Lipford, If you build it, will they come? Assessing habitat quality for birds at created marshes in southeastern Louisiana

2022 Awards

  • Best Student Paper Award: Kayla Davis, The way we count counts: using waterbird data to investigate the effects of counting error on abundance estimates

  • Student Paper Award: Jennifer Howard, Age effects on foraging are sex-specific in a breeding seabird

  • Outstanding Contribution to Conservation Award: I. Kaan Ozgencil, Functional responses of breeding wetland birds to habitat degradation and climate change

2019 Award Winners

  • Best Student Paper Award: Anouk Spelt, Life in the city: Habitat use of urban-nesting lesser black-backed gulls during the breeding season ­

  • Student Paper Award: Erin Heller, Red knot diet reconstruction using next-generation sequencing of fecal samples collected in Virginia; Caroline Poli, Unraveling the long-term demographic effects of early-life exposure to invasive prey

  • Poster Award: Sarah Bonnett, Does food availability change at different elevations on the tundra?

  • Best Poster: Juita Martinez, Nest Success and Factors Influencing Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) Breeding Ecology in Coastal Louisiana

  • Outstanding Contribution to Conservation Award: Michelle Stantial, Mesopredator Release by Removal of a Top Carnivore Affects Best Management Practices for an Endangered Shorebird

Best Student Paper Award: Charles van Rees, Navigating a paved paradise: Landscape genetics of an endangered Hawaiian waterbird
Student Paper Award: Émile Brisson-Curadeau, Location, location, location: the geographic association of thick-billed murres with their prey promises a new economic way to map fish distribution in the Arctic.

Best Student Paper Award: Lucinda Zawadzki, Vagrancy and population growth of the lesser black-backed gull
Student Paper Award: Valerie von Zuben, Nest site selection cues, intra-seasonal habitat variation, and survival of black terns

Poster Award: Sarah Gumbleton, Parasitic indicators of foraging strategies in wading birds

Best Student Paper: Katherine (Kate) Shlepr, GPS tag attachment is likely to affect hatching but not chick rearing in Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus)

Student Paper Award: Betsy Evans, Dietary flexibility of wood storks in response to human-induced rapid environmental change in South Florida

Best Poster: Sophia Orzechowski, Quantifying the impacts of Burmese pythons on wading bird reproduction

Poster Award: Michael (Mikey) Cornish, Using a commercially-available UAS to count nesting gulls on Great Duck Island Maine

  • Best Student Paper Award: Glenna Clifton, How loons swim: a high-speed, underwater view

  • Student Paper Award: Kate Ruskin, Latitudinal Trends in Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammodramus caudacutus) Fecundity across its Global Range

  • Best Poster: Golya Shakrokhi, An examination of gene flow among distinct management units of the Reddish Egret

  • Poster Award: Gillian Holmes, Nest site selection of Dunlin near Churchill, Manitoba in a changing environment

  • Best Student Paper: Lauren Scopel, Colony collapse in an arctic tern metapopulation: food, weather, or predation?

  • Student Paper: JP Ceyca, Levels of mercury and cadmium in the eggs of eight seabird species from Sinaloa, northwest Mexico

  • Best Student Paper: Laura Zango, Dynamic feeding strategies of Cory’s Shearwaters over the breeding season as revealed by GPS and stable isotope analyses

  • Student Paper: Michelle Avis, Flight behavior of breeding Piping Plovers Charadrius melodus: implications for risk of collision with turbines and other human structures

  • Best Student Poster Award: Amy Rutter, Assessing provisioning rates of Common Terns

  • Student Poster: Pedro Miguel Araujo, Using triglycerides to evaluate migratory strategies in wetland passerines

  • NAOC Student Award: Sarah Trefry, Wing marker woes: a case study and meta-analysis of the impacts of wing and patagial tags

  • Best Poster: Stephen Wurfel, co-authored with Matthew Hillman and Sarah Karpanty, Foraging activity across the diel cycle of nesting Black Skimmers

  • Student Paper: Sarah Saunders, co-authored with Erin Roche, Todd Arnold and Francie Cuthbert, Site familiarity increases fledging success in Piping Plovers

  • Student Paper: Elizabeth Craig, co-authored with Brian Dorr, Katie Hanson-Dorr, You are what you eat…plus a few permil.‘ Diet-tissue fractionation in the Double-crested Cormorant

  • Best Paper: K.S. Gopi Sundar, Simplified landscapes, complex patterns: factors influencing waterbird abundance in the perennially cultivated Gangetic floodplains, India

  • Best Poster Award for Completed Study: Jessica Amenta (Stephen Oswald, Jennifer Arnold, Pennsylvania State University, Berks Campus, Reading, Pa), Interspecific Differences in Heat Loss Behavior under Identical Climatic Conditions

  • Best Poster for Study in Progress: Andrea Claassen (Todd Arnold, Erin Roche, Francesca Cuthbert, Conservation Biology Graduate Program, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN), Nest Survival and Renesting by Piping Plovers in the Great Lakes Region USA

  • Noteworthy Poster: Monika Parsons (Cynthia Loftin, Frederick Servello, Department of Wildlife Ecology, University of Maine, Orono, ME, and USGS Maine Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Orono, ME), Evaluation of Two Temperature-sensing Devices to Detect Incubation Recesses, Nest Abandonment, and Hatch Date of Common Eiders (Somateria mollissma)

  • Best Paper: Jennifer Doucette, Food for thought: Combining conventional and novel techniques to study double-crested cormorant diet

  • Noteworthy Paper: Ingrid Barcelo, Winter Diet of Sandhill Cranes in Northern Mexico: Implications for Foraging Behavior

  • Best Paper: Sean Murphy, Investigating the Demographics of a Shorebird Near the Northern Limit of its Range

  • Noteworthy Paper: Paul Smith, Predator Abundance and Incubation behavior Explain Interannual and Interspecific Patterns of Nest Success for Arctic Breeding Shorebirds

  • Noteworthy Paper: Melissa Pink, The Role of Changing Aquatic Ecosystems on Avian Predators: Do Forster’s Terns Respond to the Aquatic Environment As Well As to Changes in Prey Abundance?

  • Noteworthy Paper: Elizabeth Bates, Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Reddish Egrets in Texas

  • Best Poster: Rafael Ordonez, Simple and Inexpensive Devices to Measure Heart Rate of Incubating Birds

  • Noteworthy Poster: Jeff R. Troy, Reduction in the Breeding Range of Newell’s Shearwaters Puffinus Newelli on Kauai, Hawaii: Evidence and Insights from Field Surveys and GIS Modeling