Understanding how birds adapt their reproductive and migratory strategies to environmental pressures will be the focus of The University of Western Ontario’s latest research facility.
Workers install the world’s first hypobaric climactic bird wind tunnel at the Advanced Facility for Avian Research. Research should begin later this summer.
The Advanced Facility for Avian Research (AFAR) will allow researchers to obtain detailed knowledge of how birds’ neural and physiological systems respond to changes in the environment.
The $9-million climate-controlled building will include analytical and experimental facilities, such as cold rooms, to learn how birds adapt to their environment. Findings could have important implications for conservation, ecosystem health, disease and assessing how birds respond to climate change.
The 13,000-square-foot facility will include 20 specialized animal-holding rooms, outdoor aviaries, wet labs, procedural rooms and specialized behaviour observation rooms.
The centrepiece is the world’s first hypobaric climactic bird wind tunnel, allowing researchers to control everything from moisture and humidity to temperature and altitude – simulating up to seven kilometers in altitude.
Assistant biology professor Chris Guglielmo was thrilled recently as the tunnel made its way slowly down the steep hill beside Saugeen-Maitland Hall to its new home just west of the Support Services Building beside the new Graphic Services Building.
“It’s exciting and a relief,” says Guglielmo. “This is the ultimate dream facility for me.”
Habitat disturbance, climate change and other stressors impose challenges to bird reproduction and migration, and birds’ high mobility makes them important carriers for disease and parasites. Bird studies have led to fundamental discoveries with long-term benefits in biomedicine and agriculture.
Conservation and population biology depend on birds as biomarkers and birds’ global movements have important implications for human and ecosystem health.
The tunnel will be constructed over the next two months with testing to begin by the end of summer. The facility has already attracted interest from scientists around the world.
“We’ve already had a number of researchers from other universities interested in wanting to check out our facility,” says Guglielmo.
AFAR will foster interdisciplinary studies and house research by scientists from the faculties of Social Science, Engineering and Science in fields ranging from biological conservation and environmental quality to human health.