Loye and Alden Miller Research Award
The Cooper Ornithological Society is pleased to present its 2007 Loye and Alden Miller Award to Robert B. Payne in recognition of his scientific contributions to the field of ornithology. It is particularly fitting to bestow this award on Dr. Payne, who was a Ph.D. student of Alden Miller at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Payne has broad research interests in the areas of social behavior and systematics of birds. He is particularly well known internationally for his large body of work on brood parasitic birds, including cowbirds, indigobirds, and cuckoos. His studies, which have included extensive fieldwork with these birds in Africa and North America as well as experimental work in aviaries and in the laboratory, have led to insightful explanations of mate choice, breeding strategies, clutch size, and nestling and adult morphology. He has carried out phylogenetic analyses of various taxa to gain insight into the evolution of parasitic behavior and produced novel host-parasite associations to study how such associations may initiate speciation events. Dr. Payne is equally well known for his highly original and in-depth studies of vocal communication in both parasitic and nonparasitic species, covering such topics as vocal mimicry, imprinting, song dialects, duetting, and cultural transmission of song and its intergenerational change. One of his many focuses is how song behavior influences brood parasitism and other social relationships, longevity, and lifetime fitness.
Dr. Payne is a prolific author, having produced more than 200 publications, including more than half a dozen books and monographs, the latest of which is a highly acclaimed study of The Cuckoos, in the Bird Families of the World series, published in 2005 by Oxford University Press. Despite his impressive publication record, Dr. Payne expressed the sentiment, with regard to his recent retirement, that he would now have time to get some research done.
Dr. Payne has received many awards that attest to the impact of his research, his sustained productivity, and the creativity of his work. Among these awards are the Brewster Medal from the American Ornithologists' Union in 1988 and the Literature, Science and Arts Award from the University of Michigan in 1998. He is a two-time winner of the Painton Award from the Cooper Ornithological Society (1975 and 1995), and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Ornithologists' Union, and the American Society of Naturalists.
After attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, for two years, Dr. Payne transferred to the University of Michigan, from which he received a Bachelor's degree in 1960. He was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965 with a dissertation on “The Breeding Seasons and Reproductive Physiology of Tricolored Blackbirds and Red-winged Blackbirds.” Following two years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Research Associate at the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town (1965–1967), he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, from which he has recently retired as a Professor of Zoology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Curator of Birds, Museum of Zoology. He has served as an Associate Editor of four ornithological journals and has advised 16 Ph.D. students.
Katma Award
The Katma Award is intended to encourage the formulation of new ideas that could change the course of thinking about the biology of birds. It will be given to the author(s) of an outstanding paper chosen by the Katma Selection Committee from among those published in The Condor, Studies in Avian Biology, or other publication of the Cooper Ornithological Society in the preceding year. An award need not be given every year. The award may be given to research articles, short communications, or commentaries (e.g., editorials, reviews) of any length. The authors may be either those who propose a largely untested idea or those who develop and advance it. A full explanation of the Katma Award was published in 2003, Volume 105(4):843 of The Condor.
The Katma Award for 2007 is presented to Marina Anciães and A. Townsend Peterson for their work entitled “Climate change effects on Neotropical manakin diversity based on ecological niche modeling” (Condor 108:778–791). This paper addressed a general topic that extends beyond birds in importance: the potential effects of climate change on species distributions, extinction vulnerability, and biodiversity. The authors used a novel technique (ecological niche modeling) together with a simplifying assumption that ecological niches will not evolve. This assumption can vary among species, but the authors chose a group of test species, the manakins, that show ecological conservatism across lineages, as an appropriate initial test. They used the Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Prediction to model ecological niches of each species, generated 100 models for each species, chose the 10 best models, and then applied differing climate change scenarios to examine predicted change effects on manakin distributions at an unusually broad geographic scale (Central and South America). Their results suggested that about half of the species might lose >80% of their modeled present-day distributions, and yielded novel predictions about potential extinction risks and biodiversity related to climate change. This approach has the potential to change views or engender discussion of climate change effects on bird species distributions, biodiversity, and conservation.
Harry R. Painton Award
The Harry R. Painton Award is given every two years to the authors of a paper deemed an especially outstanding contribution to the science of ornithology and published during the preceding four calendar years in The Condor. The Painton Award for 2007 is presented to Joshua T. Ackerman, John M. Eadie, and Thomas G. Moore for their paper titled “Does life history predict risk-taking behavior of wintering dabbling ducks?” (Condor 108:530–546, 2006). The authors designed a unique inquiry into a classic (and difficult to test) premise that life history traits are evolutionarily driven by predation risk. Previous studies addressing this topical issue have focused on breeding bird behaviors such as patterns of nest defense; this paper examines the much larger time frame (nonbreeding) within annual avian survival. Ackerman and his coauthors evaluated risk-taking behavior of seven species of dabbling ducks (Pintail [Anas acuta], Mallard [A. platyrhynchos], American Wigeon [A. americana], Gadwall [A. strepera], Northern Shoveler [A. clypeata], American Green-winged Teal [A. crecca], and Cinnamon Teal [A. cyanoptera]) and found a strong correlation between annual reproductive output and tendency of a species to approach flocks of traditional, sedentary waterfowl decoys (i.e., take risks). Species with higher annual reproductive rates tended to be less cautious when taking risks, whereas those with lower annual productivity tended to be more cautious. The authors were able to increase risk-taking behavior of a species by adding a mechanical, spinning-wing model to the flock of decoys, but this additional enticement proved unable to override life history influence on risk-taking behavior among species. The authors obtained large sample sizes and employed a solid experimental design followed by a polished technical presentation. Most significant was the thorough discussion of alternative explanations of their results. Their paper is a model that will hopefully stimulate additional, creative field experiments into the unraveling of life history traits of birds.
Honorary Memberships
Kimberly A. Sullivan
The Cooper Ornithological society is pleased to bestow Honorary Membership on Dr. Kimberly “Kim” A. Sullivan for her past outstanding service to the Society. Dr. Sullivan graduated cum laude in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1984 completed a Ph.D. in Psychobiology at Rutgers University–Newark. Following graduation, Dr. Sullivan assumed post-graduate research positions in the Biology Departments at the University of Rochester and the State University of New York, Albany. In 1987 she became an Assistant Professor at Indiana State University, and the following year moved to Utah State University in Logan, Utah, where she remains today as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology. Dr. Sullivan's research has focused on the behavior of birds, specializing initially in woodpeckers, then Yellow-eyed Juncos (Junco phaeonotus), and she now is working on Clark's Nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana). She has mentored a number of graduate students and from 2001 to 2002 served as Chairperson of the NSF Behavioral Biology Program.
Dr. Sullivan has authored over 35 published papers, many co-authored with her students, and a number have appeared in The Condor. Her areas of research interest focus around avian behavior, with a special interest in avian breeding and territoriality. She has also worked extensively on questions that deal with physiological aspects of the avian reproductive cycle. Dr. Sullivan has studied a broad array of avian host species, providing ornithologists with keen insights into aspects of passerine reproduction. She has recently turned her professional interests toward examining the role of women in ornithology and university faculty positions.
The Cooper Ornithological Society has greatly benefited from the outstanding service that Dr. Sullivan has provided over the years. From 1995 through 1997 she served on the COS Board of Directors. She served on the COS Member-Student Grants Committee from 1995 through 2000, the Editorial Review Committee from 1996 to 1998, and was the chair and member of the COS Nominations Committee in 1995 and 2000, respectively. Dr. Sullivan was elected COS Treasurer in 2003 and continues to balance the Society's financial records and work with the officers and members, providing financial guidance and direction.
For her outstanding contributions and service to our organization, the Cooper Ornithological Society is proud to award Honorary Membership to Dr. Kimberly A. Sullivan.
