Upcoming Programs

We are pleased to announce that Nuttall monthly meetings are back in person at Harvard.

Daniel T. Ksepka--Penguins, Past and Present

April 1, 2024

Curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT

Penguins evolved more than 60 million years ago. The rich fossil record of these birds has revealed unexpected forms such as giant (300lb+) penguins, spear-billed penguins, and penguins with red and grey feathers. These fossils provide a window into how penguins adapted to changing environmental conditions such as drifting continents, reorganization of Southern Ocean currents, and the onset of glacial-interglacial cycles. Increasingly, scientists are combining fossil data with observations from living penguins to gain a synthetic understanding of penguin evolution. In 2022, the complete genomes of all living penguins were sequenced and calibrated with dates from fossils, providing once unimaginable insight into species boundaries, aquatic adaptations to everything from vision to metabolism, and population expansions and crashes during the last Ice Age.

Dr. Daniel T. Ksepka is a Curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT and also holds Research Associate positions at the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum of Natural History. Dr. Ksepka earned his BS from Rutgers University and a PhD from Columbia University. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed research articles as well as numerous popular articles for venues such as Scientific American and American Scientist. His research focuses on avian phylogeny and anatomy, with a special interest in penguins. Dr. Ksepka has collected penguin fossils in Peru and New Zealand, named 11 extinct penguins species including the 340lb giant penguin Kumimanu fordycei, and participated in the recent sequencing of the complete genomes of all 19 living penguin species.

 

Allison J. Shultz--Flashy feathers to microscopic mechanisms: How and why birds are colorful

May 6, 2024

Associate Curator, Ornithology, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Join Associate Curator of Ornithology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County as she delves into the world of feathers and their colors. During her talk, she will discuss why color needs to be studied from a bird's perspective rather a human one, and how different forces have shaped the multitude of colors and patterns that we observe today (including some that humans can't see!). She will end her talk by describing some of her current work on the mechanisms underlying the great diversity of colors in birds.

Dr. Allison Shultz is Associate Curator of the Ornithology Department at NHMLAC. With her research, she seeks to understand the evolution of bird diversity, focusing on two major areas: how birds are responding to human-caused environmental changes, and how and why bird colors evolve. Dr. Shultz received her PhD from Harvard University, MS from San Diego State University, and BA from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to her research, Dr. Shultz is passionate about increasing diversity, inclusion, access, and equity in the sciences, and inspiring a love of nature in everyone.

 

 

Martin Wikelski--ICARUS – A new global IoT system for tracking movements of small migratory birds

June 3, 2024

Director, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior

The collective wisdom of the Earth´s animals provides an immense bio-treasure of unprecedented information for humankind. Learning from animals in the ´Internet of Animals´ can help us predict natural catastrophes, forecast global zoonotic disease spreads or safeguard food resources while monitoring in situ every corner of the planet. The evolved senses of animals as well as technical sensors on animal-borne tracking tags enables local earth observations at highest spatial and temporal resolution. To protect and understand the ecosystem services provided by animals, we need to monitor individual animals seamlessly on a global scale. At the same time, these unprecedented life-history data of individual wild animals provide deep, novel insight into fundamental biological processes.

The ICARUS initiative, an international bottom-up, science-driven technology development of small, cheap and autonomous IoT (Internet of Things) sensing devices for animal movement and behavior is aiming towards this: wearables for wildlife. The resulting big data available in the open-source data base Movebank help understand, monitor, predict and protect life on our planet.

Martin Wikelski is the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (formerly Ornithology) in Radolfzell (Germany), Professor in Biology at the University of Konstanz and member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Previously, he held positions at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Princeton University. His specialization is the study of global animal movement.

 

 

 

Past Programs

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Jeff Foster–Scatological Adventures in Avian Food Webs

March 9, 2024

Professor of Biology at Northern Arizona University Despite food and foraging being critical to maintaining bird populations, efficient and detailed assessment of diets has been elusive for many species. Molecular approaches, specifically fecal metabarcoding, have revolutionized our understanding of what birds eat. This talk will describe recent developments in the molecular analysis of bird diets…

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Nancy Chen – The complex consequences of dispersal in a fragmented landscape

February 5, 2024

Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, University of Rochester The movement of individuals within and among populations is an important source of evolutionary change. Our understanding of the impact of individual movement on population dynamics and fitness is limited by our inability to directly measure dispersal distances and the reproductive success of immigrants, except in a…

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Nathan W. Cooper – Full annual cycle biology: Lessons from North America’s rarest songbird

January 8, 2024

Research Ecologist, Migratory Bird Center, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute Cooper will present his research on North America’s rarest songbird, the Kirtland’s Warbler. Over the past few decades, Kirtland’s Warblers have undergone a remarkable recovery, from just 167 males in the world in 1987 to more than 2200 males today. In addition to…

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Wendy Puryear – The changing landscape of influenza: the global situation, and its impact on birds of the North Atlantic

December 4, 2023

Scientist at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University Wild birds, especially waterfowl, seabirds, and shorebirds, have long been considered the natural reservoir for Influenza A virus (IAV). The majority of IAV subtypes in wild birds are considered Low Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (LPAI) and cause little to no disease. High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI)…

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Richard Primack and Amanda Gallinat – Concord Birds, Climate change, and Thoreau

November 6, 2023

Richard Primack is a professor of plant ecology at Boston University and Amanda Gallinat is a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at Colby College The detailed records of bird sightings and phenological observations around Concord from the last 170 years—from Thoreau, Brewster, and Griscom’s notes to today’s studies by scientists at Boston University—provide a…

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Kristen Ruegg – The Bird Genoscape Project: Harnessing the power of genomics for migratory bird conservation

October 2, 2023

Kristen Ruegg is Assistant Professor at Colorado State University Most populations of migratory birds are now threatened. It is estimated that the populations of 1 out of every 2 songbirds are declining in the Western Hemisphere with impacts predicted to worsen with climate change. However, because migratory birds have both breeding, migratory and wintering areas…

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David N. Bonter – Public engagement in science: For birds, people, and conservation

June 5, 2023

Public engagement in science: For birds, people, and conservation Studying birds provide a remarkable window into the coupling of natural and human systems. This presentation will explore what we have learned about birds and people through engaging the public in scientific research. With a focus on Project FeederWatch (www.feederwatch.org), a program with data from more…

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Pepper Trail – Fighting Crime with Feathers: The Casebook of a Forensic Ornithologist

May 1, 2023

Forensic Ornithologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory Dr. Pepper Trail served as the senior forensic ornithologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement for over 20 years. During this time, he worked on over 2000 cases, identifying bird remains submitted as evidence in wildlife crime investigations. This evidence…

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Rebecca Jo Safran – The role of adaptation in phenotype divergence and speciation: an integrative and comparative perspective

April 3, 2023

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Colorado-Boulder Evolutionary mechanisms lead to changes in the phenotypic and genomic features of populations; population genetics and patterns of phenotype differentiation are often used to infer which of these mechanisms are at work. Here, I highlight the need to more directly study the underlying…

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Amber Roth – A 25-year journey to recover a rapidly declining forest songbird, the Golden-winged Warbler

March 6, 2023

Assistant Professor of Forest Wildlife Management, University of Maine Dr. Amber Roth began studying Golden-winged Warbler in 1998 as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. Little did she know then that this was the beginning of a long journey of research, monitoring, and conservation to aid this rapidly declining migratory forest species. Today…

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Jeff Foster–Scatological Adventures in Avian Food Webs

March 4, 2023

Professor, Department of Biological Sciences & Pathogen and Microbiome Institute, Northern Arizona University Despite food and foraging being critical to maintaining bird populations, efficient and detailed assessment of diets has been elusive for many species. Molecular approaches, specifically fecal metabarcoding, have revolutionized our understanding of what birds eat. This talk will describe recent developments in…

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Brian Olsen – Adapting to Novelty: what tidal marsh birds can teach us about evolving to meet new challenges

February 6, 2023

Professor of Ornithology, University of Maine Tidal marshes of the Atlantic coast of North America are host to a suite of specialized bird taxa, but tidal marshes themselves are geological ephemeral and these taxa are the descendants of species from other ecosystems. Despite their various origins, tidal marsh colonizers share a suite of adaptations and…

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Steven C. Latta – No Fool’s Errand: A Search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Louisiana

January 9, 2023

Director of Conservation and Field Research, National Aviary in Pittsburgh The history of decline of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is long, complex, and controversial. The last widely accepted sighting of this species in continental North America was 1944. A collaboration between Project Principalis and the National Aviary has produced personal observations, sound recordings, trail camera photos,…

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Michael Romero – Stress in Birds

December 5, 2022

L. Michael Romero is Professor of Biology at Tufts University In contrast to stress-related disease in humans, the stress response is vital for helping wild birds survive in their natural habitats. I will present research showing that the hormonal and physiological responses to stress are important for birds to survive natural stressors such as storms,…

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Pete Marra – The Epic Migrations of Birds

November 7, 2022

Pete Marra is Director of the Earth Commons: Georgetown University’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Laudato Si’ Professor in Biology and the Environment, and Professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy Migration is one of the most engaging phenomena of the animal world and one epitomized by birds. Migratory birds are the Olympiads of…

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Bridget Stutchbury – Why Is Tropical Bird Behavior So Different?

October 3, 2022

Bridget Stutchbury is Professor in the Department of Biology at York University, Toronto Dr. Bridget Stutchbury explores why the tropics is a unique natural laboratory that has led to unusual and varied bird behavior compared with temperate-breeding species. A large majority of research on bird behavior has focussed on North American and European breeding birds,…

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Lauryn Benedict – Divas in the treetops: When and why do female birds sing?

June 6, 2022

Lauryn Benedict is Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Northern Colorado Female bird song is more common and widespread than is generally appreciated. In this presentation Dr. Lauryn Benedict will give an overview of female bird song prevalence and variety. She will discuss what we can learn by studying the songs of female…

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Allan Strong: The Bobolink Project: Payments for Ecosystem Services to Conserve Grassland Birds

May 2, 2022

Dr. Allan Strong is a Professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. In response to continent-wide population declines in the suite of birds that nest in agricultural habitats, we initiated a payment for ecosystem services program called The Bobolink Project. Beginning in Rhode Island and expanding to…

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Tim Birkhead – How we know what we know about birds

April 4, 2022

Tim Birkhead is a Fellow of the Royal Society and emeritus professor of behaviour and evolution at the University of Sheffield We take so much for granted when it comes to birds, but where did our knowledge come from? Although people had been intrigued by birds since the palaeolithic, it was only with the scientific…

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Autumn-Lynn Harrison – Uniting across hemispheres to discover unknown migratory pathways of birds: Advancing scientific knowledge and translating to conservation

March 7, 2022

Dr. Autumn-Lynn Harrison is a research ecologist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and is the program manager of the Migratory Connectivity Project Join Dr. Autumn-Lynn Harrison, a marine ecologist with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, as she shares results from two hemispheric-scale tracking projects, and how the data have been translated into global policy…

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