Dr Mary Caswell Stoddard Mary Caswell Stoddard is now a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, USA |
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| Research | |
| My PhD research explores avian colour perception and the evolution of eggshell colour, pattern, and structure. Even to the human eye, the world of egg colour is vibrant and varied. But how do these eggs appear to birds, whose visual systems are far more advanced than our own? My research with Dr. Rebecca Kilner, Dr. Martin Stevens, and Dr. Camilla Hinde involves analyzing eggshells using methods based on avian – not human – vision in order to appropriately investigate egg colour and pattern variation in a phylogenetic context. This work, based in the ornithological collections of the Natural History Museum, Tring, and the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology, uses digital imaging and avian visual processing models to evaluate eggs as birds see them. Specifically, I am interested in developing new techniques to quantify a bird’s-eye view of egg colour and pattern mimicry in the common cuckoo, which lays its eggs in the nests of other species. I am also interested in the function of eggshell speckling in passerines. In 2009 and 2010, I conducted field experiments to test whether egg patterning affects incubation and provisioning effort by great tit parents. | |
| Past Research | |
| As
an undergraduate at Yale, I studied plumage colour evolution with
Dr. Richard Prum.
We used a model of avian tetrahedral colour space to describe
phylogenetic patterns of plumage evolution in New World buntings.
My senior thesis documented the evolution of various structural
and pigmentary colour mechanisms in bird feathers. In the summer
of 2007, I investigated gull breeding ecology with Dr. Julie Ellis
at Cornell University’s Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore
Island, Maine. |
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| Software | |
The
visual systems of birds, many other reptiles, and many fish
include four colour-sensitive retinal cone-types. As a consequence,
their colour vision is more complex than human colour vision.
Stoddard and Prum (2008) developed a new computational tool
that allows users to model visual colour stimuli for these tetrahedral
visual systems. TETRACOLORSPACE is a computer program developed
for the tetrahedral analysis of colours measured from reflectance
spectra or from four cone stimulus values, using MATLAB 7 software
(MathWorks, Natick, MA).
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| Publications (click here for a complete list) | |
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| Mary Caswell Stoddard |
| Research |
| Software |
| Selected Publications |
| Publications |