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Published: June 17, 2011

Beauty of the Beasts

John Bates, Curator and Section Head, Life Sciences, Negaunee Integrative Research Center

Dave Willard just got back from birding in northern Minnesota.  It was great to hear about all the birds he saw on his trip, and he’s already entered them into E-bird.  As he got caught up on e-mail, he sent along a link to a blog post that Meera Sethi wrote from Sweden, where she is volunteering at a bird observatory.  Meera has been a volunteer in the Bird Division, preparing specimens and that is what got her inspired to go to Sweden this summer.

Dave Willard just got back from birding in northern Minnesota.  It was great to hear about all the birds he saw on his trip, and he’s already entered them into E-bird.  As he got caught up on e-mail, he sent along a link to a blog post that Meera Sethi wrote from Sweden, where she is volunteering at a bird observatory.  Meera has been a volunteer in the Bird Division, preparing specimens and that is what got her inspired to go to Sweden this summer.  If you want to learn more, you should read Meera's posts.  The post Dave sent me focuses on hands and Meera’s thoughts on what her's are learning to do.  In particular, she refers to the extremely capable hands of Tom Gnoske, our Assistant Collection Manager, who has through the years, shown hundreds of people how to skin a bird (and how hard it is, especially to do it well).  Meera is a writer who has been inspired in our collections, but she's not alone.

Peggy painting in the Bird Division.

While we are an academic and scientific institution, I hope we never lose sight of the beauty of the nature documented in our collections.  Through the years we have had many writers and artists use the collections and we have even developed what in scientific terminology is called a synergistic relationship with colleagues from the Art Institute of Chicago.  Both Peggy MacNamara and Olivia Petrides bring their Art Institute classes to the museum to paint and even paint from specimens in the collection.  The return for us is that this opportunity has led to a number of these talented students coming back to work in the collections as interns and volunteers. 

Also, Peggy has been the museum’s Artist in Residence for more than 20 years.  It is an unpaid position, but we did finally get her an office in the Bird Division on the 3rd Floor, and she is busy working on a variety of projects including finishing up her third book based on art work inspired by the Zoology collections. Peggy has given thousands of people the opportunity to see the beauty of biodiversity and the museum through the eyes of an artist.

Antonia Webb and Kade Franzon, students from the Art Institute painting in the Bird Division (photo O. Petrides).

John Bates
Curator and Section Head, Life Sciences

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The tropics harbor the highest species diversity on the planet.  I am most intrigued by evolution at the tips of the tree of life.  My students and I study genetic structure in tropical birds and other organisms to address how this diversity evolved and how it continues to evolve as climates change and humans continue to alter landscapes.

We study comparative genetic structure and evolution primarily in the Afrotropics, the Neotropics, and the Asian tropics.  I am an ornithologist, but students working with me and my wife Shannon Hackett and other museum curators also have studied amphibians and small mammals (bats and rodents) and more recently internal, external and blood parasites (e.g., Lutz et al. 2015, Block et al. 2015, Patitucci et al. 2016).  Research in the our lab has involved gathering and interpreting genetic data in both phylogeographic and phylogenetic frameworks. Phylogenetic work on Neotropical birds has focused on rates of diversification and comparative biogeography (Tello and Bates 2007, Pantané et al 2009, Patel et al. 2011, Lutz et al. 2013, Dantas et al. 2015).  Phylogeographic work has sought to understand comparative patterns of divergence at level of population and species across different biomes (Bates et al 2003, Bates et al. 2004, Bowie et al. 2006, I. Caballero dissertation research, Block et al. 2015, Winger and Bates 2015, Lawson et al. 2015).  We also have used genetic data to better understand evolutionary patterns in relation to climate change across landscapes (e.g., Carnaval and Bates 2007) that include the Albertine Rift (through our MacArthur Grants, e.g., Voelker et al. 2010, Engel et al. 2014), the Eastern Arc Mountains (Lawson dissertation research, Lawson et al. 2015), the Philippines (T. Roberts and S. Weyandt dissertation research) and South America, particularly the Amazon (Savit dissertation research, Savit and Bates 2015, Figueiredo et al. 2013), and we are entering into the genomic realm focusing initially on Andean (Winger et al. 2015) and Amazonian birds (through our NSF Dimensions of Diversity grant). Shane DuBay is doing his dissertation research in the Himalayas on physiological plasticity in Tarsiger Bush Robins.  Nick Crouch, who I co-advise at U. Illinois, Chicago with Roberta Mason-Gamer, is studying specialization in birds from a modern phylogenetic perspective.  We seek to create a broader understanding of diversification in the tropics from a comparative biogeographic framework (Silva and Bates 2002, Kahindo et al, 2007, Bates et al. 2008, Antonelli et al. 2009).  João Capurucho (U. Illinois, Chicago, co-advised with Mary Ashley)  is studying phlylogeography of Amazonian white sand specialist birds and Natalia Piland (Committee on Evolutionary Biology, U. Chicago) is studying the impact of urbanization on Neotropical birds.  New graduate student Valentina Gomez Bahamon (U. Illinois, Chicago) is also working Boris Igic and me, after doing her Master Degree in her native Colombia on genomics and the evolution of migrating Fork-tailed Flycatchers (Tyrannus savana).  Jacob Cooper (Committee on Evolutionary Biology, U. Chicago) is studying the diversification of birds in Afromonte forests

Josh Engel and I are working up multi-species phylogeographic studies of birds across the Albertine Rift, based the Bird Division's long term research throughout the region.  We are working up similar data sets for Malawian birds.  Our current NSF Dimensions of Diversity grant on the assembly of the Amazonian biota and our NSF grant to survey birds and their parasites across the southern Amazon are generating genomic data for analysis in collaboration with paleoecologists, climatologists, geologists, and remote sensing experts from the U.S. and Brazil.  These large collaborative projects are providing new perspectives on the history of Amazonia.

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