Québec 2004 Abstracts
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Québec 2004 One Hundred and Twenty-second Stated Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union in conjunction with the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society of Canadian Ornithologists Société des Ornithologistes du Canada 16 - 21 August 2004 Université Laval Québec, QC CANADA Abstracts This Abstract Book includes the following disclaimer: "The abstracts in this work are not issued for the permanent scientific record." PLENARY TALKS Plenary 1. Bock Ernst Mayr at 100: a reflection on a life inside and outside of ornithology. WALTER BOCK, Biol. Sci., Columbia Univ., New York, NY. With his birth in 1904, Ernst Mayr is truly a biologist of the 20th century, having published his first paper in ornithology 80 yr ago. Several recent ornithologists have reached their 100th birthday, but to my knowledge none before Mayr will have a book published on this milestone. His career in biology is marked by a series of most fortunate chance-based events starting with his 1923 observation of pair of Red-crested Pochards in Germany, and his ability and hard work to make the most of each one of these chances. This series of chances led him to graduate work with Professor Erwin Stresemann in Berlin, an expedition to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, a position at the American Museum of Natural History, and finally to one of the principle architects of the Evolutionary Synthesis, all within 20 yr. He went from a successful career in systematic ornithology to an equally successful one as an evolutionary theorist, then to one as a historian of biology and finally to one as a philosopher of science. Of special interest is the assessment and comparison Mayr’s work inside of ornithology with that outside of ornithology and a consideration of their mutual influence. During his long career since receiving his Ph.D. in 1926, Ernst Mayr has influenced the careers of many ornithologists and it is fair to say that if he had not observed that pair of ducks in 1923, many of us would not be here discussing his contributions to science. Plenary 2. Hobson From birds to butterflies: making connections with stable isotopes. KEITH A. HOBSON, Prairie & Northern Res. Centre, Canadian Wildl. Serv., Saskatoon, SK. The last decade has seen an exponential growth in the application of stable isotope measurements to avian and other wildlife investigations. Three areas of particular significance involve applications to dietary reconstructions, linking breeding, wintering, and migratory stopover locations, and the quantification of endogenous vs. exogenous nutritional inputs to reproduction. In this plenary, I will review these applications with particular emphasis on the use of isotopic measurements of the light elements (C, N, O, H and S) and will cover recent studies conducted on several continents and involving a diverse array of taxa. Dietary applications involve the delineation of source of feeding and trophic interactions among individuals and species (using primarily 13C, 15N, 34S) including the tracing of frugivory in resident and migratory populations. The investigation of connectivity between breeding and wintering populations relies primarily on the use of deuterium isotope measurements of feathers in North America and on the use of δ15N and δ13C measurements of tissues in trans-Saharan migrants from Europe. Together with genetic and trace element analyses, this approach promises to relieve some of the disadvantages of traditional mark-recapture approaches to tracking migratory wildlife and has been applied to organisms as small as monarch butterflies. The quantification of the allocation of nutrient reserves to eggs by laying females using stable isotope measurements (primarily 13C, 15N, 34S) of endogenous and exogenous reserves promises to shed new light on the evolution of life history traits involving the capital vs income continuum. While all of these recent advances herald an exciting future for isotopic applications to avian studies, as with all new techniques it will be important to establish cautions and caveats to guide our research. Plenary 3. Parker Behavioral ecology and infectious disease in island endemics. PATRICIA G. PARKER, Dept. Biol., Univ. Missouri - St. Louis and St. Louis Zoo, St. Louis, MO. Studies of Galápagos birds reveal marked variation in mating system and social organization among island populations for some species, and among individuals within populations for others. These studies have produced information on variation in rate of physical interactions among individuals, and rates of gene flow among island populations for several endemic species. Such population data have provided a strong background against which to interpret new data on the distribution, prevalence, and transmission of infectious disease organisms and parasites on the islands; data on the disease organisms, in turn, inform the original inquiry into mating systems and mate choice with meaningful indices of individual quality. Significant relationships exist among habitat 2 Abstracts AOU-SCO/SOC 2004 quality and social group size (negative), group size and parasite load (positive), parasite load and host body condition (negative), group size and condition (negative), and population size and genetic diversity (positive); strikingly, the strongest predictor of parasite load is genetic diversity (negative). Conservation implications of this work are large; to date, our studies of native and introduced dove species do not implicate exotics as sources of pathogens, although much work remains. Recent focus on avian pox likewise reveals that the domestic chickens on inhabited islands have a very different poxvirus than that in the endemic passerines on the same islands. Modern genetic and phylogeographic approaches allow unprecedented resolution in understanding the history of interactions among hosts and pathogens, and their dependence on population structure, behavior, and ecology. Plenary 4. Piersma Migration: negotiating variable ecological paths through space and time. THEUNIS PIERSMA, Animal Ecol. Group, Centre for Ecol. & Evol. Studies, Univ. Groningen, and Dept. Marine Ecol. & Evol., Royal Netherlands Inst. Sea Research (NIOZ), Texel, The Netherlands. Seasonal migration, the phenomenon that birds commute between parts of the world where they do not reproduce to areas where they do, is a massive phenomenon that has attracted enormous ornithological attention. In this presentation I aim to focus on the details of the ecological conditions encountered by shorebirds, champion long-distance migrants, in the course of their seasonal migrations. A further focus will concern the 6 subspecies – and flyways – of Red Knots Calidris canutus, whose migrations provide a model system for studes on how habitat quality shapes avian itineraries. Red Knots are a suitable model species because of their stark diet and habitat specialization, which restricts their occurrence outside the breeding season in the High Arctic to open coastal intertidal wetland habitats, and their diet to hard-shelled molluscs and crustaceans. Red Knots are amenable to studies in captivity and this has enabled us to quantify the relationships between environmental conditions, time budgets, levels of energy expenditure, prey quality and quantity and relevant features of the digestive tracts. I hope to show how food quality determines fueling rates and how this is reflected in the use, and the timing of this use, of staging sites en route between southern nonbreeding and breeding areas in the far north. SYMPOSIUM PAPERS s01 Lein Ernst Mayr as a life-long naturalist. M. ROSS LEIN, Dept. Biol. Sci., Univ. Calgary, Calgary, AB. Ernst Mayr last attended a meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union in 1983, and several generations of ornithologists know him only through his publications. Student (and younger non- students) probably associate his name primarily with the “Biological Species Concept” that he has championed for >60 yr, or identify him as an architect of the “New Synthesis” that revolutionized thinking about evolution in the 1940s. Those with a theoretical or historical bent will be familiar with his contributions to the history and philosophy of biology exemplified by The growth of biological thought (1982), Toward a new philosophy of biology (1988) and One long argument (1991), all published after Mayr’s “retirement”. Older members will remember his early contributions to avian systematics and biogeography (something that has come full circle with the recent publication of The birds of northern Melanesia (2001) by Mayr and Jared Diamond). Many of Mayr’s writings express his deep admiration of Charles Darwin, and argue that Darwin’s contributions resulted, in no small measure, from the fact that he was a naturalist who was fascinated with, and stimulated by, the immense diversity of life in the world around him. I argue that, in addition to his well-deserved recognition as ornithologist, systematist, evolutionist, historian, and philosopher, Ernst Mayr is a naturalist in the Darwinian tradition. To support this thesis I present evidence including accounts of his early activities and his interactions with “amateur” ornithologists (especially youthful ones), a content analysis of one of his seminal works, and on the careers and personal experiences of the graduate students that he supervised. I conclude that he meets Futuyma’s definition of a naturalist as “a person who is inexhaustibly fascinated by biological diversity, and who does not view organisms merely as models, or vehicles of theory but,