Study in search of a tropical spring is first to show some birds flip their breeding season in response to climate

In 2014, Felicity Newell joined the Florida Museum of Natural History as a doctoral student, then quickly left the country in search of a tropical spring. It’s a concept she began thinking about while doing biological surveys in Honduras. There, a colleague told him about the work of Alexander Skutch, a renowned ornithologist who spent 20 years studying the breeding habits of birds in Costa Rica. Based on this work, he became “convinced that birds…have a well-defined nesting season and that its beginning coincides with the return of spring.”