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) H5N1 has recently entered into migratory wild birds and has proven to be significantly more lethal, wide spread, and species diverse, than any form of IAV to date. In the past two years HPAI has reached nearly all regions of the globe, decimated many wild bird populations, and spilled over into numerous mammalian species. In this presentation, I will discuss the overall ecology of IAV and update on the current situation with HPAI, how it has challenged what we thought we understood about IAV, and how it has impacted the species we see right here in the North Atlantic.

Wendy Puryear is a Scientist at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, studying how viruses are maintained, spread, and evolve in wild animals. She is especially interested in understanding the wide range of factors that impact infectious disease, from adaptations of the virus itself, to the impacts of environmental contaminants, shifting populations, and climate change. In the thick of winter, she spends much of her time organizing and conducting field work on seals off of Cape Cod, where the largest US pupping colonies of grey seals are located. Throughout the year, she works closely with wildlife professionals and stranding networks to look at wildlife ranging from birds to terrestrial and marine mammals. Back at the lab, she works to determine which viruses are circulating in the animals and tries to unravel how and why certain viruses persist. Her current research focus is primarily on Influenza, including the recent High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza, and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

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 having a compelling conservation story, its small population size and restricted breeding and winter ranges provides a truly unique opportunity to learn more about the fascinating and interconnected annual cycles of songbirds. Cooper will take us on a journey through the annual cycle of the Kirtland’s Warbler and share what we have learned from this rare species.

Nathan Cooper is a behavioral ecologist and conservation biologist. He studies how migratory birds interact with each other and their environments throughout the annual cycle. He is primarily focused on the ecology and conservation of the Kirtland's Warbler, and is currently involved in several science- and conservation-based projects with this recently delisted species. Cooper earned a B.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife from Michigan State University, a M.S. in Biology from Portland State University, and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Tulane University. He first joined the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center as a Ph.D. student in 2008, and then was awarded both Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships there, before being promoted to Research Ecologist in 2020.

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 few study systems. A long-term study of Federally Threatened Florida Scrub-Jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens) at Archbold Biological Station has identified all immigrants since 1990 and directly measured natal dispersal distances for hundreds of individuals, providing a unique opportunity to precisely measure the impact of dispersal on patterns of genetic variation over time and space. Using a 25-year genomic, phenotypic, and pedigree dataset, we disentangle the complex effects of dispersal into and within our study population on levels of genetic diversity and fitness in a fragmented landscape.

Dr. Nancy Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Rochester. Dr. Chen received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Davis. Research in her lab focuses on the genomic basis of contemporary evolution in natural populations. Her research integrates genomics and long-term demographic studies to characterize the evolutionary processes shaping patterns of variation across the genome through space and time and to link genetic variation to variation in individual phenotypes, fitness, and eventually population dynamics.

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.

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.

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.