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March 22, 2024

Avian Updates

Avian Updates

Curator of Birds John Bates has had multiple news items to report to start off 2024.

  1. A grant from the Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies funded sampling of Antarctic Gentoo Penguin (Pygoscelis ellsworthi) colonies at multiple sites in and around the Antarctic Peninsula in 2022. A new paper based on this and other sampling, co-authored by Curator of Birds John Bates and Research Associate Sushma Reddy, is just out in Molecular Ecology. This data set was part of expedition member Rachael Herman’s dissertation at the University of Stonybrook (NY). The study presents genomic data documenting genetic differentiation among colonies at impressively local geographic scales (birds are not moving between colonies that can be less than 100Km apart). Thanks to a new grant from the Pritzker Center, the expedition group is currently working on securing permits that will allow them gather samples for genomic data across similarly distributed colonies of Falkland Gentoo Penguin (Pygoscelis papua) in December 2024. 
  2. A new paper in BioScience entitled “Increasing the impact of vertebrate scientific collections through 3D imaging: The openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network” summarizes a multi-institutional effort to CT-scan anatomical species in vertebrate collections and make those digital 3D scans available through the on-line portal MorphoSource. This effort was funded by a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Collections Manager of Birds Ben Marks, former Amphibian and Reptiles Collections Manager Alan Resetar, and Curator of Birds John Bates were co-Principal Investigators on this project, and over 1200 CT-scans of Field Museum vertebrates (mostly birds and amphibians and reptiles, but also mammals and fish) were created using the micro-CT scanning facility at the University of Chicago under the direction of Associate Zhe-Xi Luo (also a co-PI on the grant). John, Ben, and Daryl Coldren (Collections Assistant, Birds) were co-authors on the new paper, which details how these data are being downloaded by researchers, educators, and the public for a growing array of projects. The capacity to make digital CT-scans of vertebrate specimens broadly available is opening up entirely new areas on study of morphological evolution (e.g., Research Scientist Chad Eliason and Associate Curator Shannon Hackett's recent work comparing evolution of brain size and bill shape across kingfishers). At the same time, as rich and useful as our collections are, the paper and the project highlight the need for future specimens to fill gaps in sampling (e.g., for 50% of the 10,800 species of birds there are one, two, or zero anatomical specimens in any collection in the world).
  3. Most curators would agree that one of the best aspects of the job is working with graduate students and seeing them move on in their careers. Three former Field Museum Resident Grad Students based in Birds have started or will be starting faculty positions this year. Jacob Cooper graduated from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Evolutionary Biology (CEB) in 2021, did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University, and is now a tenure-track faculty member in the Dept. of Biology at the University of Nebraska–Kearney. Valentina Gómez Bahamón graduated from the University of Illinois–Chicago in 2021. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State University, she will be starting a tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Biology at Virginia Tech University this coming Fall (as will her herpetologist husband Roberto Marquez, who did his PhD at the University of Chicago). João Capururcho also did his doctorate at the University of Illinois, Chicago graduating in 2020. He stayed at FMNH on postdoctoral fellowship before returning to Brazil for a postdoc in Manaus, and recently started a faculty position in the Biology Department at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora in the state on Minas Gerais. All three continue collaborations with their former advisor Curator John Bates and colleagues in Birds.

March 22, 2024