Category: Article

Tags

Published: November 1, 2014

Jizz and/or Gestalt

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

Earlier this summer, there was a discussion on an on-line ornithological bulletin board about the best word to use to describe how birders and ornithologists use their experience with subtleties of species to identify them.  The word that immediately came to mind for me was “gestalt,” which is a German word for “shape” or “form” that is associated usually associated with psychology.  It was the word I had heard growing up.  I specifically remember an ornithologist, Scott Mills, using it when he was talking to a Tucson Audubon Society workshop about identifying the various species of sparrows that inhabit the grasslands of southern Arizona.  Savannah, Vesper, Cassin’s, Botteri’s, Grasshopper, and Baird’s are all species of open grassland, and they can co-occur in southern Arizona at different times of the year, but when they are not singing, the usual view of them is of a flushed individual flying away from you.  Scott had some tips or what he called the “gestalt” to help determine what species they might be in these situations.  He described shape, color and behavioral elements.  Cassin’s and Botteri’s Srarrows are slightly larger and longer tailed.  These species don’t usually land on exposed perches like fence lines, but most frequently go back to the grass.  Vesper sparrows are longer tailed, and they have white outer tail feathers although you can’t always pick this up.  Savannah Sparrows are smaller and shorter-tailed.  Both Savannahs and Vespers often land on fences when flushed.  Savannah Sparrows are comparatively drab on their backs.  Grasshopper and Baird’s Sparrow are both short-tailed sparrows, with distinctive back patterns that one can sometimes glimpse when they flush.  They rarely go to fence lines, preferring to dive back into thick grass. 

Before I responded on the bulletin board, I did a search on-line and could not find a reference for gestalt in relation to birds.  Others immediately mentioned “jizz” although there was an alternative spelling put forward ("giss"  for “general impression, shape and size”).  It turns out there is even a Wikipedia page for “Jizz,” so I guess that nails it down as the more widely accepted word.  The definition given on Wikipedia is “the immediately recognizable characteristics of a bird.”  I see differences in the definitions between the two words that are intriguing.  To me, “Gestalt” implies the sense of what might be; while the Wikipedia definition of “Jizz” implies what “is.”  There is a difference.

I was reminded about this in Manaus, Brazil last May.  On the morning after our annual NSF Dimensions of Diversity grant meetings ended, we were treated to being lead, before sunrise, into the forests north of Manaus by Dr. Mario Cohn-Haft, one of the most experienced ornithologists in the Amazon.  Mario has spent 30 years studying Amazonian birds.  In the pre-dawn, we climbed the famous INPA tower, a large metal structure that reaches above the forest canopy.  It is a spectacular place to watch birds.  We had plenty to look at close to us; a canopy flock came by with 10-15 species of birds that were at eye level from the tower, but that you usually are craning your neck to identify from forest floor.  Because it usually so hard to see many of these species well, the most experienced birders and ornithologists, like Mario, rely on voice for most of these species.

  As the flock moved off we started scanning the distant trees for other birds.  I spotted a bird of prey sitting on an exposed perch far off, and the discussion started.  It looked big enough to me to be a forest falcon and it looked light breasted.  As we discussed the possibilities, I became satisfied it was a Slaty-backed Forest-Falcon (Micrastur mirandollei), which would be a nice record for the tower.  For me, the “gestalt” or “jizz” seemed right.  The bird seemed large, was sitting still, and its shape, and two-toned color (dark back and light breast) fit.  Mario kept looking at the bird.  He put it in a scope, and then took a few photos through the scope with a camera; the images were blurry and not yet conclusive.  It started raining and rained for 15-20 minutes, but the bird stayed put, not moving at all.  Mario kept his eye on it for some 45 minutes, the sun came back out and the light changed.  In the new light conditions, another photo through the telescope revealed the bird actually had lightly barred breast, and now we could see that its eyes were red making it a Tiny Hawk (Accipter supeciliosus).  This is a small hawk, much smaller species than a Forest-Falcon, and much smaller than I was convinced the bird was when I first spotted it.  I think I talked myself into shape differences based on my thought that it was bigger than it actually was.  So much for my sense of “gestalt” in this case.  Maybe the way to say this is that, for Mario, the “gestalt” initially said “Forest-Falcon,” the “jizz” did not?  I suspect the two words will continue to be used interchangeably, or “jizz” will win out (after all it already has a Wikipedia entry), but I like the subtle difference between being sure you are correct based on limited information (“jizz”) versus the potential of uncertainty allowed with “gestalt.”  In Manaus, I was reminded that whether you use either word, the more you look at something, you may see you jumped to incorrect conclusions based on the first sense you had.


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.