Nature finds a way

While all senior environmental biology majors complete a capstone project, not many of those projects end up in a scientific journal.

“It was always on my bucket list to publish a paper with students from this course,” said Chelse Prather, associate professor of biology and coordinator for the environmental biology program. “This was just the exact right set of circumstances, data collection and students.”

As a part of Biology 479, the senior environmental biology capstone lab, students develop and carry out research projects in small groups. A group of three undergraduate students in the Fall 2023 semester designed a research project observing unique bird nesting patterns located in a recently built ray of tracking solar panels, and decided to run tests on their characteristics to study how local bird species adapt to human-made renewable energy structures.

“It was completely student-led,” Prather said. “From brainstorming to research design to testing to data analysis.”

Students found the nests built on the solar panels to be taller, warmer and more structurally sound among these moving structures, proving “nature will find a way” in adapting to our human-made structures. It shows the native species will make usable habitats out of these newly constructed spaces.

After analyzing their observations in the course, students wrote up an article. Prather sent the article to publication in the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution, receiving publication in the June 2025 volume.

Brendan Enoch, a third-year environmental biology doctoral student, had the opportunity to take a teaching role while guiding undergraduates through their capstone project. 

“It’s a really great opportunity for undergraduate students to see and be an active participant in the whole research process, from the hypothesis to publication.” 

Although the project fell outside of Prather and Enoch’s areas of research  — insects and salamanders, respectively — both identified the findings as important and worth expanding. Prather hopes to partner with a bird researcher to continue the research.

“In their capstone courses, we’re giving students real-world experience and skills that they can put on a resume from research, work in nonprofits, science communication and more!”  Prather said.

“I’ve already introduced the capstone course by sharing the potential for publication of the students’ scientific work with the completion of their projects,” said Prather.

“At UD, students gain unique exposure to career paths they may have never thought could be a possibility in their field,” said Enoch.

Follow this link to access the published findings of the students’ research: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece37.1539