Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

The Advanced Facility for Avian Research (AFAR) is a globally unique research centre for integrative studies of bird physiology, neurobiology and behaviour. AFAR is open to researchers across Canada and the world, and brings together ecologists and evolutionary biologists, physiologists, neuroscientists, and engineers to address research questions related to bird migration, reproduction, and over-wintering. Research topics conducted at AFAR include how migratory flight is influenced by diet and environmental contaminants, the fluid dynamics of bird flight, spatial memory and navigation in birds, how birds detect and respond to predators, how birds respond to weather, how parasites and pathogens influence bird migration, and how environmental stressors affect reproduction and development. AFAR provides unique facilities, including the only wind-tunnel in the world designed for bird flight that can control air pressure, humidity and temperature (simulating altitudes up to 7 km). In addition, specialized aviaries and holding rooms allow studies of a variety of bird species in controlled conditions. AFAR also has cutting edge experimental and analytical technology including environmental chambers, acoustic chambers, behavioural observation arenas, labs for histology, hormone assays, and genetic analyses, magnetic resonance instruments for body composition analyses, instruments for measuring resting and peak metabolic rates, and a variety of software for analyses of movement and behaviour. AFAR is an intellectual hub and provides a unique training environment in which students and postdoctoral fellows from a variety of disciplines and institutions interact and collaborate on a daily basis. AFAR is also a research hub, providing the infrastructure to conduct experiments on-site and to analyze samples collected in the field or at other institutions. AFAR has been used by researchers from across Canada (BC, Ontario, Nova Scotia) as well as from institutions in the US (Rhode Island, Cornell, Massachusetts-Amherst). The infrastructure of AFAR under one roof provides a unique opportunity to conduct controlled experiments to address important fundamental and applied research questions based on observations of birds in the wild. The research outcomes from the facility will help us understand bird populations and how man-made challenges are affecting bird migration and survival.