Published: May 8, 2013

Another Thursday night for the Bird Division

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

Over the course of a year we do plenty of evening events of all kinds.  It is always fun to go support people who work in the Bird Division when possible, but last Thursday (2 May) there were multiple events happening across the city at the same time.  

Over the course of a year we do plenty of evening events of all kinds.  It is always fun to go support people who work in the Bird Division when possible, but last Thursday (2 May) there were multiple events happening across the city at the same time.  Research scientist Jason Weckstein was down at the University of Chicago with graduating senior Jennie Lee who presented her thesis work on population genetics of Ramphastos toucans.  Jennie gathered all her data in the Pritzker Laboratory and we’re looking forward to having her continue with us this summer.  She did a great job on this project and drew rave reviews from the faculty reading her paper.  We expect it will be ready to submit to a scientific journal shortly.

Research Assistant Josh Engel was talking about Madagascar to the Chicago Audubon Society at the North Park Village Nature Center.  Josh does multiple talks like this throughout the year, and always gets great reviews.  His Madagascar talk is based on his experiences leading tours to the country, but if he not talking about Madagascar, it could be South Africa or Bhutan and now he can add Uganda, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the mix since he has been working with the Bird Division. There is more about our African Field work on our web site, which Josh has developed and maintained.

I was presenting the Spring 2013 scientific proposals to the Africa Council for their consideration.  After questions and discussion, the Council funded three, the 64th, 65th an 66th proposals they have funded since the Council was first formed in the Spring of 2006, totaling almost $380,000 in awards over that time.  Two of the new awards will bring African mammalogists to Chicago to work with Bruce Patterson (Kenyan David Wachuli) and Julian Kerbis (Ugandan Sadic Waswa).  The third will allow Bird Division Collection Manager Ben Marks to gather microsatellite DNA data for the Congo Basin birds he studies. 

At each meeting of the Council, I give an update on activities related to Africa to Council each meeting, and Thursday evening, I was able to tell them great news about several of their grantees.  Nobby Cordeiro has been granted tenure at Roosevelt University.  The Council has funded several of Nobby’s project through the years and he continues to be active in his native Tanzania including taking a Roosevelt class these in the coming weeks.  University of Illinois, Chicago graduate student Carrie Seltzer successfully defended her dissertation on seed dispersal in Afromontane forests.  Carrie was co-advised by Bruce Patterson and received Council grants in 2008 and 2009. 

It was the kind of evening that highlighted some the expertise that exists in the Bird and Mammal Divisions.


John Bates
Curator and Section Head, Life Sciences

Contact Information

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.