 Life
and love amongst the finches
Aggressive redheads win the best nest sites, but can the Gouldian finches
survive?
Sarah Pryke has always had
an eye for the shape, colour and movement of animals. After growing up
surrounded by wildlife in a remote rural area of South Africa, she was employed
as an illustrator by the local museum while studying for her science degree at
the University of Natal.
Now, as a post-doctoral
fellow of the Centre for the Integrative Study of Animal Behaviour at Macquarie
University in Sydney, she is working in the Kimberleys investigating the impact
of colour on the behaviour of the Gouldian finch, a small, dazzling bird of
Australia’s tropical savannah.
With the help of her
L'ORÉAL Australia For Women In Science Fellowship she plans to get a
better understanding of their mating success – information that could be crucial
to the survival of these endangered birds.
“What started as a project
on colour communication in birds, to answer certain important questions of
evolution, is now taking on a real conservation angle,” Pryke says.
“Up to the 1980s, there
were hundreds and thousands of Gouldian finches, but with people moving through
the area and lighting fires, the population is declining each year. I want to
look at how best to increase breeding success in the finches. It is important
for the survival of one of Australia’s most colourful bird species—and perhaps
for the conservation of a unique habitat and ecological community.”
The heads of Gouldian
finches come in three distinct colours. About 70% of Gouldian finches have black
heads, about 30 percent red and less than one percent yellow. The colours are
directly genetically determined and, unlike human hair colour, there are no
intermediates.
Pryke has been trying to
work out why the three forms persist, and what advantages and disadvantages each
of the head colours confer. Normally you would expect natural selection to
favour only one colour over the others. Such brightly-coloured forms are rare in
nature, Pryke says.
“This type of genetically
inherited colouration is very unusual, but also very interesting because the
genes that control head colour could also control other aspects of their lives.”
Already she has found
significant differences in the behaviour of the three forms. The red-heads are
the most aggressive and dominate the other forms, selecting the best nest sites
and having the best access to food and mates.
But that does not
necessarily mean they have the greatest breeding success.
The red-heads spend so much
time fighting other males that they contribute very little to parental care and
are constantly under stress. So they do not tend to live as long as the more
laid-back black-heads. The offspring of the black-heads may not be born into
such a high-class neighbourhood, but they see more of their father.
Pryke has been able to link
these behavioural differences to differences in physiology. The red-heads have
much higher levels of testosterone, for instance. So what she is finding is that
the balance of the colours is reflected in a balance of advantages and
disadvantages in the community in which the birds live.
With the help of the
L'ORÉAL Fellowship, Pryke now wants to investigate the breeding success of the
finches and how the birds might best be managed for conservation purposes.
A key part of this work
will focus on mate preferences—who breeds with whom. Intriguingly, it is already
known that the females are not totally faithful to their partners and secretly
mate with other males.
In order to pursue this
work, Pryke has established an aviary in the Hunter Valley which contains a
breeding population of nearly 1000 birds.
Not yet 30, Pryke is
already a highly-regarded researcher. Her work so far on Gouldian finches has
been published in the top journals in her field. And it’s not the first time she
has made significant findings.
She is already being asked
to write chapters on bird colours and communication in textbooks. She has been a
scientific journal referee for more than 50 papers. And she has begun
supervising doctoral students.
Since arriving in Australia
in 2004, she has been awarded two highly-prized Australian Research Council
grants and a NewSouth Global postdoctoral Fellowship. It’s an outstanding record
for someone who had to convince herself that research was the life for her.
After finishing her PhD in
Sweden in 2003, she took a complete break from science for 16 months—until she
missed it.
“Ten years ago I didn’t
know what a PhD was. I never imagined I would be caught up in such an exciting
enterprise.”
2007-2009 ARC Postdoctoral
Fellowship Centre for the Integrative Study of Animal Behaviour, Macquarie
University
2004-2007 NewSouth Global
Postdoctoral Fellow School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences,
University of New South Wales
2003 PhD Department of
Animal Ecology, Göteborg University, Sweden
1999 BSc honours cum laude
School of Botany and Zoology, University of Natal, South Africa
1996-1998 BSc cum laude
University of Natal, South Africa
Career highlights
2006 The Christer Hemborg
Lecture, Uppsala University, Sweden (Invited lecture for an early career
researcher in evolutionary biology)
2004 Pitelka Award,
International Society for Behavioural Ecology, Jyväskylä, Finland (awarded for
best paper in behavioural ecology at the ISBE Congress)
2002 S2A3 Gold Medal Award,
awarded by the University of Natal for top Master’s thesis, South Africa
1999 NEBS Top Honours
Thesis, awarded by the National Evolutionary Biology Society, South Africa
1999 Dean’s Commendation,
awarded for first class grades by the Dean of the Faculty of Science: Honours
(1999), Third Year (1998), Second Year (1997), First Year (1996)
Grants awarded
2007-2009 Australian
Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0770889) CI: Dr SR Pryke (APD)
2006-2008 Australian
Research Council Linkage Grant (LP0667562) CI: Dr SC Griffith; Dr SR Pryke;
A/Prof WA Buttemer
2005-2006 Australian
Academy of Science Award for Research on the Conservation of Endangered Native
Animals
2004- 2007 NewSouth Global
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Australia University of New South Wales, Sydney
2004-2007 Claude Leon
Harris Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (Royal Society) (Note: funding
declined in favour of NSG Fellowship)
2004-2006 National Research
Foundation Prestigious Postdoctoral Fellowship, South Africa (Note: funding
declined in favour of NSG Fellowship)
2000-2003 STINT
International Scholarship for Academic Excellence (PhD funding), Sweden
2001-2003 NRF Prestigious
Scholarship for Doctoral Study Abroad, South Africa
1999 NRF Honours Scholarship,
South Africa
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