Picture of Karen Wiebe

Karen Wiebe B.Sc., Ph.D. Professor Emeritus

Office
CSRB 310

Research Area(s)

  • Sex roles in parental care
  • Foraging and habitat use
  • Energetics of incubation
  • Behavioural ecology
  • Plumage colour

Publications

A few key ones are below. A complete list is under the "documents and links" tab on the column to the right, see also profile under Research Gate on the web.

Slagsvold, T. and Wiebe, KL. 2010. Social learning in birds and its role in shaping a foraging niche. Phil. Trans. R. Society B. 366: 969-977.

Wiebe, K.L. 2010. Negotiation of parental care when the stakes are high: experimental handicapping of one partner during incubation leads to short-term generosity. J. Anim Ecol. 79: 63-70.

Wiebe, K.L. and T. Slagsvold. 2009. Mouth colouration in nestling birds: increasing detection or signaling quality? Animal Behavior 78: 1413-1420.

Wiebe, K.L. 2009. Nest excavation does not reduce harmful effects of ectoparasitism: an experiment with a woodpecker, the northern flicker. J. Avian Biol. 50: 166-172.

Wiebe, K.L. and B. Kempenaers. 2009. Unusual social and genetic mating system in flickers linked to partially-reversed sex roles. Behavioral Ecology 20: 453-458.

Wiebe, K.L. 2005. Asymmetric costs favor female desertion in the facultatively polyandrous northern flicker (Colaptes auratus). Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 57: 429-437.

Martin, K., K.E.H. Aitken and K.L. Wiebe, 2004.  Nest sites and nest webs for cavity-nesting communities in interior British Columbia, Canada: nest characteristics and niche partitioning.  Condor 106: 5-19.

Teaching & Supervision

Among the upper-level courses I have taught recently:

Biol 470 (Conservation Biology)

Biol 472 (Animal Behaviour)

Biol 350 (Honour's Field course)

Biol 410 (Current Perspectives in Environmental Biology)

Research

birds foraging parental care reproductive success woodpecker

Behavioural ecology and reproductive ecology of birds

Main themes include incubation, parental provisioning, sex roles and foraging

***see webpage for more detailed overviews***

Education & Training

BSc. (Honours) 1988. Simon Fraser University

Ph.D. 1993. University of Saskatchewan

Postdoc (NSERC/Killam Fellowship). 1993-1995. University of British Columbia

Postdoc (International Mobility) 1996. University of Turku, Finland