Loye and Alden Miller Research Award Recipients
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
