Trisha Poling is a native of Indiana, and received a B.A. in biology from the University of Southern Indiana in 2002.  While at USI, Trisha played softball and worked at the Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve.  Trisha began her M.S. program at TTU in August of 2002.  Since January 2003, she has supervised construction of the new aviary facility on Tech’s campus.  Click here to see pictures of this construction project, completed with help from a number of undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Biology at TTU.

Trisha currently is using the TTU aviary facility in her research of foraging niche overlap and competition between mourning doves and exotic Eurasian collared-doves.  Click here for more information about Eurasian collared-doves and their invasion of North America.

Data collection for Trisha's project began in August 2003, using doves she trapped in Coffee County, Tennessee, and will continue through August 2004.  Feeding trials are documenting similarities and differences in seed selection between the 2 species, as an index to potential competition.  Additionally, interference competition trials are evaluating the outcome of direct competitive interactions for food patches in a large (free-flying) aviary environment.

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