Meet the Scientist

Name: Rauri C.K. Bowie
Position/Title: Postdoc
Department: Zoology - Birds

1. What do you study related to biodiversity (what are your research questions, what organisms do you work on)?

My research has largely focused on the colorful and charismatic sunbirds, most of which belong to the largest bird genus Nectarinia. The sunbirds are a particularly interesting group with which to model biogeographic patterns because of their high species richness and endemism, and ecologically, for the important role that they play in plant pollination. In spite of their importance, there is a paucity of information on the distribution of, and relationships within this group. Various authorities have divided taxa in different ways and one key objective is to resolve their taxonomy and thereby define the conservation status of these species. In addition to the systematics research above, I am investigating within species variation and species boundaries in two groups of African sunbirds, Olive Thrushes and some African robins and finches.

2. How do you study biodiversity (for example, what technological tools and methodologies do you use in your research)?

In order to collect data to address the questions above my research incorporates three distinct phases. The first is fieldwork, where I visit natural populations of the species I am working on to collect tissues for DNA sequencing studies, as well as morphological, behavioral, and environmental data.

Once back from the field, I extract DNA from the tissues collected as well as from those obtained from other museums around the world, and then set about collecting DNA sequences from both the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. This information is then combined with my field notes on morphology, behavior and ecology, as well as additional data that have been gleaned from museum specimens, which collectively is used to assess for example the taxonomic status of a morphological divergent population.

3. Where do you study biodiversity?

I primarily work on birds that are distributed among the richly forested montane (high-altitude) habitats of Africa, which are scattered along a 5000 km mountain chain running from the Ethiopian Plateau in the north to the coastal areas of South Africa. To the west are isolated mountain chains in Angola and Cameroon. Whereas some of these montane habitats are within visual distance of each other, others are separated by hundreds of kilometers.

Yet, in nearly all cases, the intervening vegetation appears to form an effective barrier to dispersal for species confined to breeding within these high altitude environments, raising conservation concerns with respect to how isolated individual populations are from each other.

4. How might your research have implications for biological conservation?

Nearly 300 species of African birds breed above 1800 m and are thus classified as montane. Some of these species are among the rarest birds in Africa, often restricted to a single mountain range, and in some cases have populations that total less than 2,000 individuals. This makes further study of these communities a high conservation priority. Despite this pressing need, the montane flora and fauna of Africa have been relatively poorly studied.

Results from analyses of the DNA of birds from different mountain populations to date are intriguing; many of these populations appear to be much more isolated than previously thought, with little or no gene flow occurring among populations once thought to be connected. In some cases it has been possible to corroborate morphological evidence with DNA data suggesting that some populations have been isolated for a considerable period of time, and that they should be accorded species status. In the same vein fieldwork by colleagues and myself have uncovered a number of new distribution records and a putative new species of sunbird from Tanzania.

5. How did you become interested in science? What made you want to be a scientist, and how did you get to The Field Museum?

I grew-up on a farm in South Africa and have been interested in biology for as long as I can remember. Following my childhood interest I went to University and did an undergraduate degree in Biology, then a master degree in Conservation Biology and finally a Ph.D. I can think of no better life than to be able to wake-up each morning looking forward to seeing what new discoveries can be made in either the laboratory or the field.

The Field Museum is one of only three institutions in the USA to contain a collection of nearly all the world’s sunbird species and a modern laboratory for DNA analyses, effectively enabling researches to combine traditional morphological studies with more modern DNA sequencing studies. In addition, the museum houses one of the largest bird tissue collections in the world. It was for these reasons that I first visited the Field Museum in 1999 and at the invitation of Dr. Shannon Hackett (curator in birds) have continued to return over the intervening years. This year I am working with Dr Hackett to build a family tree (phylogeny) using DNA sequencing data of bird species representing the global biodiversity in order to try and better understand the origins of modern birds.

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