“…Animal senses are really cool and so different from our own… A better understanding of how animals perceive the world and how that affects where they go and what they do can also be useful to humans…”
An interview with Diana Rubene, Ph.D. (Postdoctoral Scientist, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala)
By: Lauren Snyder, Ph.D.
Meet Dr. Diana Rubene, a guest researcher at the Zoological Biodiversity Working Group at the Institute of Geobotany. She is a postdoctoral scientist at the Department of Crop Production Ecology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala where she studies animal behavior and species interactions in agricultural landscapes.
Diana’s collaboration with the Institute of Geobotany began in 2020, when she was awarded a mobility research grant from the Swedish Research Council Formas for a collaboration with Professor Emily Poppenborg Martin, head of the Zoological Biodiversity Working Group, to investigate the impact of birds on agricultural crops. Broadly, the goal of the project is to understand how the feeding behavior of birds impacts crop health—do birds protect crops by feeding on insect pests that could cause plant damage or are birds hunting beneficial insects that prey on crop pests, thereby releasing pests from a potential predator?
Below, Diana shares more about this multidisciplinary research project and how she became interested in bird foraging behavior and the role birds play in agricultural systems.
What sparked your interest in birds and their role in food production?
I became interested in birds as a master’s student, but at the time I was mostly interested in bird vision and behavior. After completing a Ph.D. in forest insect ecology, which had a strong focus on landscape ecology and the influence of landscapes on conservation management, I was keen to go back to studying birds. A postdoctoral position came up with an opportunity to investigate bird-insect-plant interactions in cereal crops, which was the perfect way to combine all my interests. The subject area was rather new and exciting, as birds were typically not considered as important pest control agents in agriculture. I wanted to understand under which conditions could birds be beneficial to crops and which mechanisms drive their foraging behavior.
What are some of your favorite aspects of this project?
That it involves both basic and applied aspects and it is broad in a sense that we are trying to uncover the mechanisms on an individual level—bird and insect attraction to herbivore-induced plant volatiles—and test how these interactions between plants, insects, and birds may contribute to the patterns of plant damage we observe on the scale of a crop field or even a landscape.
What is a recent project challenge you had to overcome, and how did you do it?
While training great tits (Parus major) to find food using either color or odor cues, I used mealworms as a food reward. This is normally a very nutritious and attractive reward, but some birds are very conservative in their food choices. One great tit just didn't want to pick up any food and I was getting nowhere until I realized that the mealworm was the issue, not the experimental setup. I replaced the mealworm with sunflower seeds and the bird progressed immediately. After that, I fed a few mealworms to all birds before starting experiments to make sure they get familiar with this food. A couple of individuals still took several days to accept the worms and had to start their training with sunflower seeds. Even birds can be picky eaters!
Generally, I find that a combination of flexibility and persistence is helpful for overcoming challenges. We are often scared to change or modify our methods, because it might appear inconsistent. But using poor methods will not lead to meaningful results in any case, and discovering what works and what does not will help others who try to perform similar experiments.
What would you like the public to know about this project?
That animal senses are really cool and so different from our own! We easily assume that insects and birds just move around at random or interpret the environment by the same cues as we do. However, some of their sensory abilities are superpowers compared to ours and each of them is an individual with their own preferences and life experiences. A better understanding of how animals perceive the world and how that affects where they go and what they do can also be useful to humans, for example, for agricultural planning, environmental management, and biodiversity conservation.
Outside of research, what are some of your favorite activities or hobbies?
Baking and cooking, birdwatching, gardening, hanging out with family and friends, or chatting over coffee with my colleagues.
