At its 1993 Annual Meeting, the Cooper Ornithological Society initiated the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award, which is given for lifetime achievement in ornithological research. Loye Holment Miller (1874-1970) began his teaching career in 1904 at the Los Angeles State Normal School which later became UCLA, and he retired in 1943. It was only in the last nine years of his active service that the Ph.D. degree was awarded and, in that time, he had two M.A. and two Ph.D. students. Alden Holmer Miller (1906-1965), Loye's son, began his teaching career in 1931 in the Department of Zoology and Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the faculty until his death 34 years later. Miller sponsored 28 Ph.D. students, 26 of them in avian biology. Among their students, those with a Ph.D. in avian biology total 166. Additionally, there are at least 40 whose Ph.D. topics were non-avian (brief biographies follow):

• 1993 George A. Bartholomew
• 1994 Storrs Olson
• 1995 Barbara B. DeWolfe
• 1996 William R. Dawson
• 1997 Robert W. Storer
• 1998 Russell Balda
• 1999 Gordon H. Orians
• 2000 Ernst W. Mayr
• 2001 Frank A. Pitelka
• 2002 Richard T. Holmes
• 2003 B. Rosemary and Peter Grant
• 2004 Alexander Skutch
• 2005 John A. Wiens
• 2006 Robert E. Ricklefs
  

George A. Bartholomew - 1993 George A. Bartholomew, organismal biologist extraordinaire, has greatly advanced the field of physiological ecology by mastering animal behavior, ecology, and physiology, and with rare insight, combined relevant aspects of these areas to assess the evolutionary significance of adjustments or adaptations in animals to their respective environments. By choosing species appropriate for the particular problem in hand and thus by studying a great variety of animals from insects to mammals in a wide array of habitats, he achieved a broad basis for his comparative studies. His more than 150 publications include a study of heating production in plants and a seminal paper on the ecology of protohominids. Among his papers on birds are studies on photoperiodic control of reproduction, water economy, electrolyte excretion, respiratory regulation, torpor, and social behavior. His original ideas on the individual as the unit of selection, the organism as a series of compromises, and the importance of multiple factors in determination of survival and geographic distribution are all now recognized as aspects of the modern intellectual approach to physiological ecology. Although his influence on biology is based primarily on his original scientific research, he is also a distinguished teacher. His academic lineage, which numbers more than two hundred individuals, has been estimated to include one-half of the practicing physiological ecologists in the United States. His textbook chapters are masterful summaries of ideas, and his many films are models for combining ideas with clarity and beauty. It is a pleasure to present the first Miller Award to the man whose broad view of life, intelligence, insight, and diligence have been combined to create a new way of looking at the individual animal. This honor seems especially fitting because of Professor Bartholomew's association in his career with the two individuals whom it commemorates.

Storrs Olson - 1994 One of the world's foremost avian paleontologists, Storrs Olson is widely known for his outstanding scientific productivity. His contributions have been wide ranging. They have dealt with paleofaunas encompassing nearly the entire span of the avian record, from the Cretaceous to the Recent. Geographically, they have virtually covered the globe; intellectually, they have included subjects from descriptions of new species and faunas, to analyses of systematic problems, to clarification of the role of ontogeny in the evolution of flightlessness, especially in rails. Olson is perhaps best known for his work on the fossil and subfossil birds of oceanic islands, including the West Indies, St. Helena, Fernando do Noronha, Ascension, and the Hawaiian Islands. This research has documented many previously unknown radiations of birds and shown that extant species comprise only a small remnant of the original avifauna in the Hawaiian Islands and elsewhere. It has further demonstrated the important influence of humans on insular avifaunas: some distribution "anomalies" are not natural but stem from extinctions caused by the activities of prehistoric societies prior to the arrival of European colonists. These findings have required ecologists to reexamine some of their beliefs, because his analyses of paleofaunas demonstrate that species/curves, which have figured prominently in conservation applications of the theory of island biogeography, are unreliable and irrelevant for making predictions about the size of avifaunas on islands. Olson, often in collaboration with Helen James, has communicated his ideas through a large series of publications, with a clarity of writing style that is the envy of his peers. He is the most active practitioner of avian paleontology in North America, continuing the rich tradition of this field established by Loye and Alden Miller. The Cooper Ornithological Society is pleased to recognize these accomplishments with the 1994 Miller Award to Storrs L. Olson.

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Barbara DeWolfe - 1995 Barbara Blanchard De Wolfe, pioneer in the studies of avian life history and physiology, launched her career by studying the biology of the White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys). Her Ph.D. research on two subspecies of White-crowned Sparrows, under the direction of Joseph Grinnell, is a classic model for field studies of the natural history of reproductive cycles. This remarkable opus, which was years ahead of its time, catalyzed detailed studies spanning several decades and dealing with diverse ornithological subdisciplines such as taxonomy (e.g., Banks, Lein), environmental physiology (e.g., Farner, King), and song dialects (e.g., Marler, Baptista, and others). Throughout this continuing work by others, De Wolfe has pursued her own research and has remained a dominant figure in these areas for over half a century. Indeed, her work is the primary reason that the White-crowned Sparrow has become one of the most frequent subjects of avian research.

Natural history is no longer popular among the funding agencies, yet, only in good detailed natural history studies such as De Wolfe’s can we come to understand what organisms actually do in their environment. For example, some of the classic research in animal behavior involves laboratory studies of song development in various emberizine birds. In the lab, hand-raised naïve nestlings eventually learn song during a short time window (the sensitive period), then are silent through the fall and early winter (the memorization phase), and in the spring practice and sing the song acquired the previous year. However, by following young birds in the field De Wolfe discovered that fledgling Nuttall’s White-crowned Sparrows (Z. I. nuttalli) sing adult song in the fall when they try to stake out territories. Thus, the long memorization phase observed in the laboratory by several workers is possibly an artifact of the lack of social interaction in a deprived situation.

In addition to constituting major scientific breakthroughs, De Wolfe’s early studies were also societal breakthroughs as they were conducted in an era when women were tolerated but not really welcome in the biological sciences. Throughout her many years of teaching and research, she has been a model for the earnest, yet good-natured scientist who is far more concerned with seeking the truth and sharing the joys of research than with enhancing her reputation and ego.

In recognition of her heroic and pioneering studies, her over 50 years of excellence in biological research and excellence in teaching, for being an inspiration to generations of young men and women, the Cooper Ornithological Society takes pleasure in awarding Barbara Blanchard De Wolfe the Miller Award for 1995.

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William R. Dawson - 1996 William R. Dawson is one of the world's foremost comparative physiologists. In addition to his outstanding research on reptilian and mammalian physiology, it is his pioneering research on how birds survive hostile environments, particularly deserts and cold climates, that this award recognizes. Bill Dawson was George Bartholomew's first graduate student at UCLA, and his Ph.D. dissertation was one of the first studies to use the comparative approach in the newly emerging field of physiological ecology. That research, followed by decades of comparative studies on desert and closely-related non-desert birds in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Australia, focused on the physiological and behavioral mechanisms used by desert birds for regulation of body temperature and body water content. During his forty-plus years at the University of Michigan, he also studied how birds, particularly small ones, survive cold winters. A rare attribute of his approach to physiological research is that he validates his laboratory findings with field observations. His multifaceted approach, utilizing ecological, physiological, behavioral, endocrinological, cellular, and biochemical techniques, has illustrated that survival in hostile environments is fostered by a variety of adjustments at a variety of biological levels. Dr. Dawson has served on the Board of Directors of the Cooper Ornithological Society, is an Honorary Member of the Society, and received the Painton Award in 1963. He is also recipient of the Brewster Award and is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society. He has served as President of the American Society of Zoologists and on the editorial boards of many journals, including The Condor, The Auk, and Current Ornithology. The Cooper Society recognizes Bill Dawson's lifetime contributions to the ornithological Community through outstanding research and dedicated service.

Robert W. Storer - 1997 A 1936 graduate in Chemistry from Princeton University, Professor Storer enrolled as a student in Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1940, and, following an interception associated with the defense effort in World War II, completed a Ph.D. in Zoology with Alden Miller in 1949. He subsequently moved to the University of Michigan, where he has spent his career, becoming Professor Emeritus and Curator Emeritus of Birds in 1985. The Miller Award is given in recognition of Robert Storer's research accomplishments that have extended over nearly six decades and continue. His work reveals a broad approach to the study of birds, with his publications dealing with topics ranging from paleontology to the flight characteristics of Accipiter hawks and, soon, to the parasites of grebes. His contributions to avian systematics and to the understanding of the variation, behavior, and evolution of grebes and alcids are particularly important. He also is to be commended for his numerous articles on "Avian Exotica" in Birder's World. which effectively informed the interested public about the biology of unusual birds. His publications are noteworthy for their breadth of approach, insightful character, and meticulous scholarship. Professor Storer's research has been complemented by an army of other important contributions to avian biology. Twenty-two students have completed the doctorate with him and the list includes a number of individuals who have achieved prominence in this field. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union, and has served the organization as President and as a member for 34 years of its Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of North American Birds. He also has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Cooper Ornithological Society of which he is an Honorary Member. His contributions to the dissemination of the results of avian research include service as Editor of The Auk and Ornithological Monographs, and Assistant Editor of The Condor. Productive scholar, effective graduate advisor, and able contributor of numerous services to ornithology, Robert W. Storer is a worthy recipient of the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award of the Cooper Ornithological Society.

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Russ Balda - 1998 The Miller Award is given to Russ Balda in recognition of more than three decades of research accomplishments on a wide variety of topics in ornithology. These include natural history, conservation, breeding biology, habitat selection, community ecology, population ecology, sociobiology, evolution, behavioral ecology, and cognitive ethology. For the past 26 years Russ has been studying the behavioral ecology of the Pinyon Jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). The results are reported in numerous research papers and a book co-authored with John Marzluff. For the past 15 years Russ has been working on spatial cognition in seed caching birds with Alan Kamil. Special emphasis has been given the characteristics of spatial memory in Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana), comparative tests of spatial memory in seed-caching corvid species that have different degrees of dependence on cached seeds, and differences in spatial memory between the sexes. With Wolfgang Wiltschko, Russ discovered that certain seed caching birds can use the sun compass and the associated biological clock as aids in locating cached seeds. Much of the work has been accomplished in the Avian Cognition Laboratory, a state-of-the-art research facility that Russ designed and had built on the Northern Arizona University campus. Recently Russ has developed hypotheses pertaining to the evolution of abstract intelligence in closely related corvids. These hypotheses are based on the idea that social animals must develop skills that allow them to judge complex interactions with conspecifics. These ideas are being tested with the aforementioned corvids and also Western Scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) and Mexican Jays (A. ultramarina). At Northern Arizona University Russ has served as the major professor for 36 M.S. and 14 Ph.D. students. In 1979 he received an Alumni Distinguished Faculty Award, and in 1987 a President's Award for Teaching, Research, and Service. In 1988 Russ became Northern Arizona University's first Regents' Professor. Extramurally, both nationally and internationally, Russ has accumulated a long list of honors including Honorary Membership in the Cooper Ornithological Society, for which he served as President, Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union, the Animal Behavior Society, the Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Arizona and Nevada Academies of Sciences.

Gordon H. Orians - 1999 The Cooper Ornithological Society takes great pleasure in naming Gordon H. Orians recipient of the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award for 1999. This award is presented for lifetime achievement in ornithological research. In 1960 Gordon completed his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, under the direction of Frank Pitelka. His doctoral dissertation on social systems of marsh-nesting blackbirds was instrumental in establishing the emerging discipline of behavioral ecology, for which Gordon was one of the strongest and most effective advocates and leading researchers. After joining the faculty of the Zoology Department at the University of Washington in 1960, Gordon continued his work in behavioral ecology and became an outstanding mentor of young scientists, producing some of America's most gifted and influential students. He also promoted tropical ecology through his involvement with the Organization for Tropical Studies, serving as President of OTS from 1988 to 1994. From the beginning of his career, Gordon has taken an active interest in environmental problems, which led to his directing the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Washington from 1976 to 1986. As a member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences since 1989, Gordon has served his profession as an expert panelist in a number of areas of interest vital to society, including the preservation of biodiversity. Many students will know Gordon as the coauthor of a best-selling introductory biology text. His scientific books include monographs on blackbirds, published in 1980 and, with Les Beletsky, in 1996, and a recent edited volume on biodiversity in tropical forests. For more than four decades, Gordon has been leaving his indelible mark on much of ornithology. All contemporary work on territoriality, habitat selection, mating systems, and population studies in behavioral ecology owes a debt to his pioneering research. But his influence extends far beyond the pages of printed journals. He has inspired and trained generations of undergraduate and graduate students, promoted his profession in many ways, emphasized our obligations to serve society through the application of scientific knowledge to the problems of humankind, and been a role model for countless young academics. For those of us who have known Gordon personally, he has been a great friend and wonderful company. In view of his lifetime of achievements and contributions to our profession, the Cooper Ornithological Society is pleased to present the 1999 Miller Research Award to Gordon H. Orians.

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Ernst W. Mayr - 2000 The Cooper Ornithological Society takes great pleasure in naming Ernst W. Mayr recipient of the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award for 2000. This award is presented for lifetime achievement in ornithological research. Soon after completing his Ph.D. degree from the University of Berlin in 1926, Ernst led three biological expeditions (the Whitney South Sea expeditions) to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands (1928-1930). During these trips he developed a deep appreciation for variation in populations among islands that would serve as a foundation for his later seminal contributions to the New Evolutionary Synthesis, and particularly to our modern understanding of the processes of species formation. More than 100 scientific papers resulting from the New Guinea/Solomon expeditions, mostly written while Ernst was Curator of Birds at the American Museum of Natural History (1932-1953), greatly expanded our knowledge of the birds of the Southwest Pacific region. During this period, he wrote "Speciation Phenomena in Birds" (Am. Nat. 74: 249-278, 1940), in which he developed the Biological Species Concept, elaborated in "Systematics and the Origin of Species" (Columbia, NY, 1942), which was one of the cornerstones of the New Synthesis. In 1953, Ernst became Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, and in 1961, Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1963, Ernst published the monumental "Animal Species and Evolution" (Belknap Press), which synthesized systematic, geographic, population, and genetic perspectives in the most influential treatise on speciation of the 20th century. Since "retiring" in 1970, Ernst has written several books on biological thought, at once insightful, provocative, and delightful, including "The Growth of Biological Thought" (Belknap,1982), "Towards a New Philosophy of Biology" (Belknap, 1988), "One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought" (Harvard, 1991), and "This is Biology" (Belknap, 1997). Ernst's contributions to evolutionary biology have received ample recognition, most recently by the Crafoord Prize (1999). The Miller Research Award further acknowledges his wonderful contributions to our knowledge of birds and the importance of his ornithological observations to developing his ideas on evolution and speciation. Ernst was one of the most influential ornithologists of the 20th century. His clarity of thought provided a basis for numerous productive research programs and launched the careers of many important ornithologists. For all of us, Ernst is a model of dedication to scholarship and life-long learning. To those of us who have known Ernst personally, he has been a wonderfully supportive, frank, and encouraging colleague and friend.

Frank A. Pitelka - 2001 The Cooper Ornithological Society takes great pleasure in naming Frank A. Pitelka recipient of the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award for 2001. This award is presented for lifetime achievement in ornithological research. Frank Pitelka is one of the most influential ornithologists of the past 50 years. His papers on speciation and molt in jays, predator-prey cycles in the arctic tundra, and the social organization of arctic sandpipers are as fresh and relevant now as when they appeared. Frank's bibliography extends over seven decades, which in itself is a remarkable testimony to his dedication and persistence, but frequent citation of even the earliest papers reminds us of his foresight and leadership in studies of birds. Frank received his undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois, where he was strongly influenced by Victor Shelford, and completed his doctoral studies on Aphelocoma jays at the University of California at Berkeley, where he subsequently joined the faculty of the Zoology Department and became Curator of Birds at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Frank's interests were always broad and his approach innovative. He was one of the first to place the social behavior of animals in an ecological framework. He was captivated by population cycles of small mammals in arctic environments and advanced the "nutrient recovery" hypothesis to explain them. His prolific scientific work, comprising more than 200 publications, has greatly enriched our understanding of the behavior and ecology of birds and mammals. He has also served our profession selflessly and effectively on numerous committees and in many editorial capacities, including a long term as associate editor of The Condor. Frank's contributions to his discipline have been recognized by the Brewster Medal Award from the American Ornithologists' Union, a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Illinois, and the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America. Perhaps the most important aspect of Frank's rich legacy are the many students that he nurtured, advised, encouraged, and cajoled. Many of these students, now professors and senior research scientists, have made the study of the evolution, ecology, and behavior of birds what it is today. Frank has also been a strong and outspoken champion of the environment and has made his influence felt on critical issues. The fortunate among us who know Frank have also appreciated his warmth, sense of humor, and good company, not to mention his highly refined taste for the good things in life. It is with great pride that the Cooper Ornithological Society bestows the Alden and Loye Miller Research Award on Frank Pitelka.

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Richard T. Holmes - 2002 The Loye and Alden Miller Research Award is a fitting recognition of the outstanding lifetime achievements of Richard T. Holmes in ornithological research. Dr. Holmes has sustained a brilliant research career, spanning four decades, that has generated a wealth of knowledge on the ecology, behavior, and population dynamics of Neotropical migrants on their north-temperate breeding grounds and tropical wintering grounds. His ecological research at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire, and his work in islands of the Caribbean and Central America have been highly influential in our understanding of the effects of climate and biotic factors on the demography and community structure of forest birds. His long-term research has few parallels. It is noteworthy for its own evolution of research questions and hypotheses, and for the emergence of a pluralistic model of population regulation and community structure of Neotropical migrant birds. Dr. Holmes has maintained not only fruitful study of central research questions, but fruitful collaborative relationships with students as well. Together, they have investigated a tremendous breadth of topics, including the evolution of life-history traits of forest passerines, mating systems, reproductive ecology, territoriality, site fidelity and dispersal, survivorship, habitat selection, foraging behavior, and the impact of avian predation on invertebrate populations. Of his more than 100 publications, his most oft-cited papers include his early work with Frank Pitelka on social organization of arctic-breeding sandpipers. Dr. Holmes currently collaborates in the development and testing of stable isotope analyses as a tool to link breeding and wintering grounds of birds. Dr. Holmes completed his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, under the guidance of Frank Pitelka. He joined the biology faculty at Dartmouth College in 1967, where he mentored 20 graduate and post-doctoral students as well as innumerable undergraduates. As a visiting scientist, he worked at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Australia, and at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He has been generous in contributing his time and expertise to many committees, editorial panels, and scientific advisory boards of professional societies and foundations. He has served on the governing councils and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Ornithologists’ Union. He currently serves as an editor for the Journal of Avian Biology. Dr. Holmes has been recognized throughout his productive career for his contributions to ornithological research. He won the Cooper Ornithological Society’s A. Brazier Howell Award in 1964, the Harry R. Painton Award twice, in 1967 and 1985, the American Ornithologists’ Union’s William Brewster Award in 1993, and the Wilson Ornithological Society’s Margaret Morse Nice medal for lifetime contributions to ornithology in 2002. To this impressive history, we add the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award of 2002.

B. Rosemary and Peter Grant - 2003 The recipients of the 2003 Loye and Alden Miller Award for lifetime achievement in ornithological research, Drs. Rosemary and Peter Grant, are a true research team. Their 30-year research program on the evolutionary dynamics of Darwin's finches on Isla Genovesa and Isla Daphne Major in the Galapagos is classic. Over the past 40 years, they have produced volumes of data that have been published in several books, monographs, and more than 180 journal articles. Nearly two dozen of their papers have appeared in Science, Nature, and American Naturalist.

The Grants’ research has evolved across a diversity of topics, from their early work on ecological compatibility of bird species on islands and competition of small mammals to the speciation and adaptive radiation of Darwin’s finches. Their studies have been instrumental in developing an understanding of speciation in birds and of how microevolutionary processes can be used to account for macroevolutionary traits. They have demonstrated that selection acting on morphological variation can cause evolutionary change within observable periods of time. Their current work focuses on understanding the pattern of finch phylogenetic history through an analysis of microsatellite DNA variation, and the causes and consequences of hybridization.

Peter received a bachelor’s degree from Cambridge University, England, and doctorate from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Rosemary received a bachelor’s degree from Edinburgh University, Scotland, and PhD from Uppsala University, Sweden. They served as research associate and professor at McGill University, Yale University, and University of Michigan before joining the faculty at Princeton University in 1985 where they are currently professors and scholars in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. They have mentored and advised numerous graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in a variety of evolutionary, ecological and behavioral research questions pertaining to beetles, butterflies, birds, and mammals.

The Grants have been generous in contributing their time and expertise as plenary speakers, journal editor, officers and committee members of several national and international professional societies, and university administrative positions. Rosemary is an Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Peter is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Ornithologists’ Union, and Linnean Society of London. The Grants have been recognized both individually and jointly for their contributions to evolutionary research on numerous occasions. They received The Wildlife Society’s 1991 Wildlife Publication Award for their book “Evolutionary Dynamics of a Natural Population: the Large Cactus Finch of the Galapagos,” the 1998 E. O. Wilson Prize of the American Society of Naturalists, the Royal Society 2002 Darwin Medal, and now the Cooper Society’s Loye and Alden Miller Research Award of 2003. Because the ornithological research has been true teamwork, the Cooper Society recognizes Drs. Rosemary and Peter Grant for their seminal and ground-breaking work on the evolution of Darwin's finches.

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Alexander Skutch - 2004 In this time of increasing emphasis on the theoretical and experimental aspects of biology, including ornithology, Alexander Frank Skutch stands out as a compelling symbol of the importance of the study of natural history. Although many of his publications deal with botany or philosophy, the Cooper Society bestows this award in recognition of his staggering contribution to our knowledge of the life histories and ecology of Neotropical birds, which previous to his work were either little known or completely unknown. During his nearly seven decades of study, he has published more than 20 books and hundreds of papers in both the scientific and popular literature.

We sometimes lose sight of the fact that today’s sophisticated studies of avian ecology, evolution, and behavior rest on a foundation of natural history information. It is the wealth of observations of the basic biology of species that point the way to more theoretical questions and hypotheses. Skutch himself moved in that direction as a result of his observations of cooperative breeding in birds, which he first reported in 1935 (1), as well as his discernment of the diversity of reproductive rates among species. Robert Ricklefs (2) has noted that as a result of the latter perception, Skutch (3) very early on “outlined a basic proposition of r- and K-selection theory.”

Alexander Skutch was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1904 and will, this month celebrate his 100 th birthday. He has always been interested in nature and received his Ph.D. in botany from Johns Hopkins University in 1928. Later in life he supported himself and his family by collecting and selling botanical specimens to museums. He made his first visit to Central America in 1928 to carry out research on bananas for the United Fruit Company (4). He became fascinated with a rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl) nesting outside his laboratory window (5), and the rest, as they say, is history. Professional ornithologists are the beneficiaries of his multitudinous scientific works, but he also had an impact on amateur ornithologists and those simply interested in nature, conveying to them the beauty, wonder, and excitement of the Neotropics and it avian inhabitants.

* On Saturday evening, May 8, during its 74th annual meeting, The Cooper Ornithological Society named Alexander F. Skutch as the recipient of the 2004 Loye and Alden Miller Research Award. Arrangements were made to present the Medal and Citation to him at his home in Costa Rica on May 20, as part of a celebration of his 100 th birthday. Dr. Skutch passed away on May 12. At a posthumous celebration of Dr. Skutch’s life, Dr. Alfonso Mata, Vice‑President of the Board of Directors of the Tropical Science Center , with which Skutch was long associated, presented the Miller Medal on behalf of the Cooper Society to the Ornithological Society of Costa Rica in Dr. Skutch´s memory. The Small Preserves Network in Costa Rica plans to restore the old farmhouse where Dr. Skutch lived and turn it into a museum about his work and an educational center. The Medal will be displayed at the museum.

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John A. Wiens – 2005  The Cooper Ornithological Society is pleased to bestow the 2005 Loye and Alden Miller award on John A. Wiens in recognition of his contributions to science in the areas of community ecology, competition theory, and landscape ecology. Dr. Wiens's two-volume work on the The Ecology of Bird Communities1 challenged the use of competition to explain community patterns and processes, to the exclusion of alternative theses. He was also instrumental in increasing the rigor, in terms of sampling design, scale, statistical analysis, and data interpretation, with which ecological studies are conducted. In addition, his early work on patch boundaries was prescient in anticipating the field of landscape ecology, and his later work has contributed significantly to the growth and development of the discipline. His studies of the influence of spatial pattern on ecological processes, in particular, have significant implications for land management and habitat conservation.

The importance of Dr. Wiens's research has been recognized with numerous other awards including the Elliott Coues Award, American Ornithologists' Union (1991), Distinguished Landscape Ecologist Award, International Association for Landscape Ecology (U.S. Regional Chapter 1996), and the Twentieth Century Distinguished Service Award, Frontiers of Environmental and Ecological Statistics for The 21st Century, Bowling Green State University (1999).

Although Dr. Wiens is generally identified professionally as an ecologist, rather than as an ornithologist, most of his ecological work has been carried out on avian subjects and their habitats. That is not surprising given that he has always been interested in birds, starting as an avid birdwatcher in his early days in Oklahoma, where he grew up. He received his Bachelor's degree in Zoology from the University of Oklahoma in 1961. He then moved to the University of Wisconsin in Madison to earn his MA and Ph.D. degrees in 1963 and 1966, respectively, completing a dissertation on community relations among grassland birds. John has held teaching positions at several U.S. universities, culminating with his position as a University Distinguished Professor, at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins. In 2002 he left academia, accepting a position at The Nature Conservancy where as Chief Scientist, he is working to implement science-based conservation.

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Robert E. Ricklefs – 2006  The Cooper Ornithological Society is pleased to present its 2006 Loye and Alden Miller Award to Robert E. Ricklefs in recognition of his scientific contributions to the fields of ornithology and ecology. Dr. Ricklefs has carried out extensive and innovative research in the areas of avian development, reproduction, and demography, including publishing a book on Avian Growth and Development: Evolution within the Altricial-Precocial Spectrum (with J. M. Starck, 1998). He has also made fundamental contributions in the areas of population and community ecology, species diversity, and the biology of aging. His two globally recognized and widely used textbooks, Ecology and The Economy of Nature, in their 4th and 5th editions, respectively, have set the standard for 30 years, informing and inspiring thousands of students. More recently he has been a leader in integrating phylogenetic data into community ecology.

Dr. Ricklefs is a prolific writer, having authored or edited six books, more than 250 papers in refereed journals, and nearly 100 commentaries, book chapters, reports, and book reviews. Although more than 70 percent of his publications deal with birds, the focus of his research is anything but static. He has also published extensively on plants, malarial parasites, lepidopteran larvae, and other taxa.

Dr. Ricklefs has received many awards that attest to the national and global impact of his research, his sustained productivity, and the creativity of his work. Among these awards are the Brewster Medal, American Ornithologists' Union (1991), President's Award, American Society of Naturalists (1998), Presidential Award for Research and Creativity, University of Missouri System (2001), Fellows Award, The Academy of Science of St. Louis (2002), and the Sewall Wright Award, American Society of Naturalists (2005).

Dr. Ricklefs received a Bachelor's degree in Biology from Stanford University in 1963 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967 with a dissertation on “The Significance of Growth Patterns in Birds.” Following a year as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, he joined the faculty of the Biology Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He remained there until 1995, when he moved to the University of Missouri at St. Louis to assume his current position of Curators' Professor of Biology.

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