We ask alums profiled on the Hampshire website a few questions about their careers, research, and work.
We recently chatted with Justin Baldwin 08F about his work studying animal behavior in college, and being featured on the cover of acclaimed ecology journal Oecologia.
1.Describe your Division III in ten words or less?
Pepper plants may have evolved spiciness to give bats diarrhea.
2. Three adjectives to describe your Hampshire experience?
Critical. Weird. Fun.
3. What are three skills you learned through the divisional process at Hampshire?
Academic self-discovery, approaching faculty, advisors and outside researchers to collaborate, and how to write grant proposals (Hampshire has awesome funding opportunities!)
4. What was the last “A-Ha!” moment you had?
When I found out that a poorly known hummingbird from the Peruvian Andes changes its incubation rhythm with the outside temperature. The ones I worked on live above 6500 feet, lay eggs the size of tic-tacs, and manage to survive serious cold nightly temperatures during incubation. They do it by making incredibly warm nests, and changing their incubation behavior in lockstep with the thermometer. That’s the last paper I submitted, in a nutshell.
5. What can people learn from reading about your work?
For me, basic biology research is data-driven storytelling about the mysteries of nature. The field that I work and write in is mostly about “how and why plants and animals are the way they are and do the things they do”. By reading my research, I hope people can learn about how awesome bats and birds are and what intricate and ingenious solutions they have evolved to face their lives’ challenges.
Read Baldwin’s full story here.
