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    Published: August 4, 2014

    Heaney receives 2014 Aldo Leopold award

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

    Quoting the American Society of Mammalogists, "The Aldo Leopold Award is awarded to a well-established individual who has made a lasting contribution to the conservation of mammals and their habitats. Aldo Leopold, the 'father' of wildlife ecology and management, is well known for his famous land ethic philosophy and his influence on wildlife conservation, including his active membership on ASM Conservation Committees in the 1930s."

    At their recent meetings in Oklahoma City, the society announced that the 2014 recipient is Dr. Lawrence Heaney, curator of mammals at the Field Museum.

    The award was given to Larry with the following citation.  "Dr. Heaney has worked tirelessly over the past three decades to creatively explore, document and conserve the highly diverse mammalian fauna of one of the most diverse oceanic archipelagos on our planet. During that time, he also was heavily engaged in training the next generation of local mammalogists; many of these individuals are now in professional conservation, resource management, or academic positions in this archipelago. His work has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation and a wide range of conservation NGOs and foundations. As a student, our awardee was naturally drawn to Southeast Asia through his interest in biogeography and his appreciation that islands of this part of the world provided fertile ground for research into the diversification of insular faunas. Interest in this region early in his career led to a lengthy and highly productive research program, with more than 160 publications that detail impressive new taxonomic discoveries, new insights into the biogeography of the region, conservation biology of endemic species and phylogenetic relationships among a significant portion of the mammalian fauna (especially rodents and bats) of this Southeast Asian region. All aspects of his research are oriented toward conservation. In addition to his high research productivity, our awardee also was instrumental in the formation and development of several conservation efforts in the region including new conservation NGOs (Wildlife Conservation Society of the Philippines) and through his training efforts, the development of human capacity in conservation biology for the region. He also has made information on mammals accessible to the general public by publishing beautiful popular books focused on conservation topics for the region including the widely acclaimed Vanishing Treasures of the Philippine Rain Forest."


    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.