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Christine Stracey's portrait
Biology Department

Christine Stracey Richard

Professor of Biology


Office

FFSC-134C
+1 (336) 3162258
straceyrichardcm@guilford.edu

Biography


Christine Stracey Richard started teaching at Guilford College in 2014. She is an ornithologist and I research on factors that affect reproductive success in songbirds. Recent work has focused on understanding breeding behaviors, such as singing on the nest and predator alarm calls. Much of this research utilizes video cameras to quantify nesting behavior. 

My teaching interests are in animal behavior, ecology, and evolution. I try to give students authentic research experiences in all my classes and love finding ways to engage undergraduate students in all my projects!

I structure my spring three-week Field Ornithology (Biol 336) class more as an internship than a typical class. Students are in the field every morning, collecting data and gaining field skills, while in the afternoon they learn about ornithology. For example, in spring 2021, half of the class helped design and execute an experiment in which we presented model predators at mockingbird nests and recorded the alarm calls that the parents made in response to different predators. Students helped find nests for the trials, helped us figure out how to run the trials (fyi, cats on leashes don't work!), and then ran all of the trials during the three-week course. We found that mockingbirds give different alarm calls for different species of predators (e.g. "chats" at cats and "chucks" at snakes). These results will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
 

Education


University of Florida, Ph.D., 2010
Biology
Columbia University, M.A., 2002
Conservation Biology
College of New Jersey, B.S., 1996
Biology
Chemistry

Courses Taught


Intro Bio: Diversity, Form, and Function (Biol 201)
Intro Bio: Ecology and Evolution (Biol 202)
Animal Behavior (Biol 334)
Field Ornithology (Biol 336)
Conservation Biology (Biol 350)
Ecology (Biol 438)

Areas of Interest


Singing on the nest in mockingbirds
Nest sanitation behaviors in bluebirds
Effect of urbanization on mimicry in mockingbirds