Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept.
The white-throated sparrow is a passerine bird of the New World sparrow family Passerellidae.
The white-crowned sparrow is a species of passerine bird native to North America. A medium-sized member of the New World sparrow family, this species is marked by a grey face and black and white streaking on the upper head. It breeds in brushy areas in the taiga and tundra of the northernmost parts of the continent and in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast. While southerly populations in the Rocky Mountains and coast are largely resident, the breeding populations of the northerly part of its range are migratory and can be found as wintering or passage visitors through most of North America south to central Mexico.
Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs are distinguished by function from calls.
David Lambert Lack FRS was a British evolutionary biologist who made contributions to ornithology, ecology, and ethology. His 1947 book, Darwin's Finches, on the finches of the Galapagos Islands was a landmark work as were his other popular science books on Life of the Robin and Swifts in a Tower. He developed what is now known as Lack's Principle which explained the evolution of avian clutch sizes in terms of individual selection as opposed to the competing contemporary idea that they had evolved for the benefit of species. His pioneering life-history studies of the living bird helped in changing the nature of ornithology from what was then a collection-oriented field. He was a longtime director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at the University of Oxford.
The golden-crowned sparrow is a large New World sparrow found in the western part of North America.
Harris's sparrow is a large sparrow. Their breeding habitat is the north part of central Canada, making it Canada's only endemic breeding bird. In the winter they migrate to the Great Plains states of the United States, from southern South Dakota to central Texas. The common name of this species commemorates the American amateur ornithologist Edward Harris (1799–1863).
Ecology and evolutionary biology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerning interactions between organisms and their ever-changing environment, including perspectives from both evolutionary biology and ecology. This field of study includes topics such as the way organisms respond and evolve, as well as the relationships among animals, plants, and micro-organisms, when their habitats change. Ecology and evolutionary biology is a broad field of study that covers various ranges of ages and scales, which can also help us to comprehend human impacts on the global ecosystem and find measures to achieve more sustainable development.
Andrew Cockburn FAA is an Australian evolutionary biologist who has been based at the Australian National University in Canberra since 1983. He has worked and published extensively on the breeding behaviour of antechinuses and superb fairy-wrens, and more generally on the biology of marsupials and cooperative breeding in birds. His work on fairy-wrens is based around a detailed long-term study of their curious mating and social system at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.
The rufous-collared sparrow or Andean sparrow is an American sparrow found in a wide range of habitats, often near humans, from the extreme south-east of Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, and the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean. It has diverse vocalizations, which have been intensely studied since the 1970s, particularly by Paul Handford and Stephen C. Lougheed (UWO), Fernando Nottebohm and Pablo Luis Tubaro (UBA). Local names for this bird include the Portuguese tico-tico, the Spanish copetón ("tufted") in Colombia, as well as chingolo and chincol, and comemaíz "corn eater" in Costa Rica.
Barbara Blanchard DeWolfe was an American ornithologist. She graduated with an undergrad in 1933 and obtained her PhD in 1939 both from UC Berkeley. She taught for several years and pioneered studies of avian life history and physiology on the white-crowned sparrow. Despite facing discrimination because she was a woman, she went on to publish over 30 works and was the 1995 recipient of the Cooper Ornithological Society’s Loye and Alden Miller Research Award, which is given in recognition of lifetime achievement in ornithological research.
Dale Hartwell Clayton, a parasitologist and professor of evolution at the University of Utah. Clayton is the taxonomist of Strigiphilus garylarsoni.
Glen Dean Chilton is a Canadian-Australian scholar and author of humorous books on adventure travel and natural history.
Richard Fourness Johnston was an American ornithologist, academic and author. He was born in Oakland, California, and early developed an interest in zoology, especially birds. He served in the Army during World War II, and was injured in the European theater. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in biology. In 1958, he joined the Zoology Department at the University of Kansas, Lawrence and became curator of its Natural History Museum. His research interests included the house sparrow P. domesticus and the feral pigeon C. livia. He was awarded the title of professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He was the founding editor of the scientific journal Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics (1970-1991).
Susan C. Alberts is an American primatologist, anthropologist, and biologist who is the current Chair of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University; previously, she served as a Bass fellow and the Robert F. Durden Professor of Biology at Duke. She currently co-directs the Amboseli Baboon Research Project with Jeanne Altmann of Princeton University. Her research broadly studies how animal behavior evolved in mammals, with a specific focus on the social behavior, demography, and genetics of the yellow baboon, although some of her work has included the African elephant. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014, won the Cozzarelli Prize of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016, and was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.
Sandra Lee Vehrencamp, is a scientist, teacher, and mentor who specializes in Behavioral ecology, with a geographical focus on avian species in Costa Rica. She served as a faculty member of Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology and Department of Neurobiology and Behavior and taught graduate students while conducting research until retiring as of October 2010. She currently resides in Ithaca, New York, with her husband, Jack Bradbury.
Luis Felipe Baptista was an American ornithologist of Portuguese–Chinese descent born in Hong Kong. He was considered an international expert on bioacoustics, animal behavior and avian systematics.
James Roger King (1927–1991) was an American ornithologist, specializing in avian physiology.
Elaina Marie Tuttle was an American behavioral geneticist and biology professor whose academic research focused on ornithology and study of the white-throated sparrow. During her graduate and post-doctoral work, she investigated how bird sexual selection has evolved and the trade-offs in reproduction that have occurred alongside sperm competition mechanisms in sparrows and in the fairy wren. Her last major publication in 2016 discussed the evolution of a sexual "supergene" in the white-throated sparrow that has created a complementary pair of genetic sexes in addition to the W and Z sex chromosomes found in birds. The decades of work researching the sparrow at the Cranberry Lake Biological Station (CLBS) for Indiana State University resulted in her being given multiple awards and the President's Medal for her accomplishments.
