Current Lab Members

If you are interested in working with me, please send me an email at leanne[dot]grieves[at]usask[dot]ca with your CV, unofficial transcripts, and a message about your research and career goals and interests. If you have a specific project or idea you’d like to pitch that you think would be a good fit for my research program, lay it on me!

Dr. Leanne Grieves (PhD)

Position & qualifications:

2025 – Present: Houston Professor of Ornithology – University of Saskatchewan
2023 – 2025: Rose Postdoctoral Fellow – Cornell University
2021 – 2023: NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow – McMaster University
2020 – 2021: McCall MacBain Postdoctoral Fellow – McMaster University
2016 – 2020: PhD (biology) – Western University
2012 – 2014: MSc (biology) – McMaster University
2005 – 2011: BSc Hons (biology) – The University of Winnipeg

When I’m not working, you can find me birding, hiking, boxing, checking out live music, or hanging out with my animal family!

Dr. Grieves’ Past Work:

As a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University, I developed a project on multimodal communication and mate choice in Song Sparrows. The goals of this project are to:

Determine female preferences for unimodal stimuli (acoustic, visual, chemical/olfactory) and understand how females weight and integrate multimodal signals.
Link lab-based preferences for multimodal stimuli to field-based (i.e., natural) mate choice and reproductive success.

As a Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University, I worked on two main projects:

Characterizing the chemical and microbial profiles of neotropical birds and testing for differences in chemical and microbial richness and diversity based on key life history traits such as season, migration distance, and breeding habitat type.
Characterizing the chemical and microbial profiles of a joint-nesting bird species and testing for i) group odour signatures in the highly social smooth-billed ani (Crotophaga ani), ii) evidence that group odour similarity positively correlates with egg-laying syncrhony, iii) shared microbiota among group members (both adults and nestlings), and iv) evaluating the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors in the composition and ontogeny of nestling microbiota.

I completed my PhD at The University of Western Ontario (Supervisor: Dr. Elizabeth MacDougall-Shackleton). My research explored the role of preen oil chemical cues and preen gland microbes in songbird communication and mate choice. I tested whether song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) use chemical cues in preen oil (a proxy for body odour) to assess species, sex, major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genotype and avian malaria parasite infection status of potential mates. I also investigated whether microbes living within and on the preen gland are correlated with MHC genotype and preen oil chemical composition.

To assess whether geographically distinct song sparrow populations differ in their MHC-genotypes, parasite communities, preen oil chemistry, and microbial communities, I sampled wild birds at three locations across southern Ontario, and using gas chromatography and molecular genetics tools to characterize MHC, parasite diversity, preen oil chemical composition and microbial diversity at each population.

You can access & download my dissertation here.

My MSc research at McMaster University (Supervisor: Dr. James S. Quinn) focused on acoustic and visual communication in a cooperative breeding cuckoo, the smooth-billed ani (Crotophaga ani). During three field seasons in southwestern Puerto Rico, I completed research projects on vocal repertoire, referential alarm signaling and signals of aggressive intent.

You can access & download my MSc thesis here.

My BSc research at The University of Winnipeg (Supervisor: Dr. L. Scott Forbes) explored brood parasitism, brood reduction and nest predation in red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus).

You can access a publication from this work here.