Category: Article

Tags

Published: April 27, 2013

The Chimney Swifts are back

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

I spent Saturday morning, April 27, 2013, sitting outside with a cup of coffee going over page proofs for our Art of Migration book featuring Peggy MacNamara’s beautiful artwork which soon will be published by University of Chicago press.  It was fun sitting outside looking through the text even though I still eventually got cold enough to need to go back inside.  All around me were signs of what I was reading about. 

I spent Saturday morning, April 27, 2013, sitting outside with a cup of coffee going over page proofs for our Art of Migration book featuring Peggy MacNamara’s beautiful artwork which soon will be published by University of Chicago press.  It was fun sitting outside looking through the text even though I still eventually got cold enough to need to go back inside.  All around me were signs of what I was reading about. 

But I want to start with something about last Thursday afternoon because it illustrated the joy of migration and tied into this morning.  On Thursday, I was on my way home up Lake Shore Drive, unfortunately for reasons I cannot understand, traffic patterns shift seasonally just like the birds.  Over the past few days, northbound Lake Shore Drive has begun to get backed up during the evening commute.  This can go back all the way to the Foster Avenue exit when it is really bad.  Those changes are frustrating, but I did not find it quite as oppressive on Thursday.  As I reached the lines of cars trying to get off the Drive, I began to see one of my favorite birds of Chicago summers, Chimney Swifts, dipping and diving low over the parks along the lakefront.  It was cool, so the only insects for these newly arrived birds were probably coming off the park grass, later in the year they will often be high in the skies presumably catching other types of insects.  In all, I estimated 40 Chimney Swifts as I inched my way northward and this is the kind of birding from the car that is hard to when there is less traffic and speeds are higher.  These birds have come from wintering grounds in the Amazon Basin that scientists still do not really understand. 

Fast-forward to Saturday morning.  In the yard, different species of sparrow search for seed I have set out.  A single Song Sparrow and Slate-colored Junco are still around.  Most of their populations came through several weeks ago.  White-throated and Swamp Sparrows are now the most numerous yard sparrows, but a Field Sparrow also stopped by for a short while.  Then, I hear a pleasant and distinctive chatter that will become commonplace soon.  I search the skies and finally spot the first Chimney Swift of the year over my yard.  Later a Turkey Vulture glides over silently, heading north.  In the yard, I also spot a House Wren and a Black-and-White Warbler that are new for Spring.  I hear and spot a few more swifts, and then a swallow high up that I cannot identify to species.  In all I record 27 species in the yard and get through about half the book.  Its warming up, May is coming and thousands upon thousands of birds are on the move through the Chicago region.

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.

Related content,Check this out