CHICAGO—September 26, 2024—The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is pleased to announce the awardees of the 2024 Kessel Fellowship for Ornithological Research for early-career researchers. Four individual $15,000 fellowships were awarded to Drs. Andre Moncrieff, Glaucia (Glau) Del-Rio, Felicity L. Newell, and Anne Ausems to support their ornithological research.
“The Kessel Committee is thrilled to support the research of these four awardees,” says this year’s Kessel Fellowship Selection Subcommittee chair Carrie Branch. “These researchers are conducting innovative science that is critical for moving our knowledge of avian systems forward, including furthering our insights into the ecology of Arctic breeding birds to speciation and biodiversity of tropical birds across South America. We wish these scientists the best of luck and are keen to hear about their research findings.”
AOS President Colleen Handel says, “Across the globe, bird populations have been suffering staggering declines, many of which have been linked to human-induced climatic change. Our award winners will be using state-of-the-art techniques to investigate birds inhabiting some of the most rapidly changing landscapes on earth—Neotropical and Arctic ecosystems—to understand the drivers and mechanisms of population change and the ultimate impacts on avian biodiversity. The insights gained from this research will be invaluable for identifying ways to protect the avifauna and the systems upon which they rely from further devastating losses.”
These fellowships—made possible through a generous bequest by Dr. Brina Kessel—support the full range of ornithological research by early-career scientists currently published in peer-reviewed journals, such as avian biology, ecology, behavior, conservation, genetics, and interdisciplinary work.
Congratulations to these awardees! Read on for more information about the researchers and the projects being funded by this year’s Kessel Research Fellowships.
Andre Moncrieff, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Louisiana State University
Dr. Andre Moncrieff is a postdoctoral researcher at Louisiana State University (LSU) where he is pursuing research on the speciation of Neotropical birds. He completed undergraduate degrees in Biology and Music at Andrews University in Michigan and then began his Ph.D. at LSU. While at LSU, he has collaborated on nine field expeditions to the Neotropics, which have fueled his ongoing research on the origins of the exceptional bird diversity found in the region. Moncrieff’s research interests include systematics, phylogeography, landscape genomics, and natural history of birds. He has received previous research grants and awards, including the AOS Alexander Wetmore Memorial Research Grant (2019), an NAOC Travel Grant (2016), two AOS Travel Grants (2019, 2024), the American Society of Naturalists Student Research Award (2019), and a Mohammed Bin Zayed species conservation fund grant (2019) to study the poorly known Cordillera Azul Antbird. Looking forward, Moncrieff’s dream is to continue developing collections-based research projects on tropical birds as a professor or museum curator.
Project title: “How do river rearrangements impact Amazonian biodiversity?”
Abstract: The Amazon Basin is one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet and a natural laboratory for studying speciation mediated by biogeographic barriers. Within Amazonia, these barriers are primarily large rivers, including the Amazon, Madeira, Negro, Tapajos, and Xingu rivers, which delimit the geographic ranges of numerous taxa and populations. Nowhere else in the world is there such a striking pattern of taxon replacements across multiple neighboring interfluves. This pattern intuitively suggests that rivers are playing an important role in isolating populations and facilitating speciation processes. However, recent geological work has shown that river barriers have been highly dynamic over their history, which complicates attempts to associate river barriers with speciation. River rearrangements, caused by river avulsions and river captures, may result in the passive dispersal of terrestrial organisms across river barriers, which has numerous possible consequences of evolutionary significance. These landscape-driven dispersal events have the potential to promote the colonization of new areas, gene flow among previously isolated populations, and even peripatric speciation. I propose that a viable path forward for understanding the evolutionary significance of river rearrangements in Amazonia will benefit from a combination of several recent technological advances including genomic simulations over a changing landscape, high-resolution satellite imagery, and whole genome analyses. I will leverage these advances to investigate neutral and adaptive patterns of genomic introgression among bird populations around river rearrangements. My research, fundamentally, will help to address the paradox that river rearrangements have potential to both suppress speciation (by increasing contact and gene flow among opposite-bank populations) and promote speciation (by increasing opportunities for colonization across dispersal barriers). River rearrangements may also reduce extinction rates in Amazonia by facilitating sharing of beneficial loci through adaptive introgression between opposite-bank populations. Thus, a detailed understanding of gene flow and dispersal around river rearrangements may be of key importance for understanding the rise of Amazonian biodiversity.
Follow Dr. Moncrieff’s research: ORCID-ID
Glaucia (Glau) Del-Rio, Ph.D.
Assistant Curator of Ornithology, University of Florida
Dr. Glaucia (Glau) Del-Rio is a Brazilian field and museum ornithologist, as well as an evolutionary biologist with a passion for Amazonian birds. She was recently appointed as an Assistant Curator of Ornithology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Del-Rio earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of São Paulo, and her Ph.D. in Systematics, Ecology, and Evolution from Louisiana State University. She also served as an Edward W. Rose Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
In her lab, Del-Rio conducts research in bird speciation, genomic architecture, population genetics, evolutionary developmental biology, systematics, spatial ecology, and conservation. Her work primarily focuses on Neotropical birds and is grounded in a strong fieldwork program. In 2019, Del-Rio led an all-women expedition (Emilie Snethlage Expedition) in Amazonia to raise awareness about gender disparity in field ornithology. Currently, she works as a reviewer on the AOS Early Researcher Awards Committee, the AOS Student and Postdoc Research Grants Committee, and the South American Classification Committee (SACC). Del-Rio is a past recipient of the James G. Cooper Early Professional Award (2023); an AOS Award for best oral presentation (NAOC, 2020); and an AOS Student Travel Grant (2019).
Project title: “The role of mitonuclear evolution in the speciation of Amazonian birds”
Abstract: My proposed research investigates the role of mitonuclear incompatibilities and environmental stressors in shaping species boundaries during secondary contact in Amazonian antbirds in the genus Rhegmatorhina. By integrating genomic data with physiological assays, I aim to understand how mitochondrial and nuclear gene interactions influence reproductive isolation and hybrid fitness. Specifically, I hypothesize that mitonuclear incompatibilities, which arise from the rapid divergence of mitochondrial and nuclear genes, may reduce hybrid fitness in regions of secondary contact, while climatic differences across the Aripuanã River may exert selective pressures on mitochondrial function. Genomic analyses of populations of Rhegmatorhina hoffmannsi across the Aripuanã River revealed candidate genes involved in the mevalonate pathway, which may drive hybrid incompatibility by affecting mitochondrial function. To test the role of mitonuclear incompatibilities and environmental factors, I will conduct functional tests and assess metabolic performance under varying temperature and humidity conditions. The results will enhance our understanding of how genomic mechanisms and environmental pressures maintain species integrity in the face of ongoing gene flow, with broader implications for avian diversity and speciation in Amazonia.
Follow Dr. Del-Rio’s research: ORCID-ID
Felicity L. Newell, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Louisiana State University
Dr. Felicity Newell’s research focuses on Global Change Ecology with an emphasis on how changing rainfall and increased extremes caused by human-induced climate change impact biodiversity, especially in the tropics. Working from local to global scales, she combines in situ weather and gridded data with field studies, experiments, and synthesis to link species, community and ecosystem-level responses to climate through behavior, physiology/traits, population dynamics, and food webs. For her Ph.D. at the University of Florida, Newell initiated the project Aves del Bosque Montano in the Andes of northern Perú where she studied how rainfall regulates reproduction across food webs from plants to insects to birds. For her M.S. at The Ohio State University, she studied full life cycle stewardship of canopy-nesting birds, building on previous work on nesting ecology of migratory birds in the Appalachians, where she trained as a bird bander at Powdermill Avian Research Center. Newell also coordinated avian monitoring projects with the Klamath Bird Observatory in Oregon. Currently, she is returning to the U.S. for a postdoc in Tropical Ecology at Louisiana State University after being based as a postdoc in Switzerland, where she is scaling up results from her dissertation with researchers in Africa and collaborating with the German-Ecuadorean Reassembly research unit studying threatened Chocó rainforest. Newell is a past recipient of an AOS Alexander Wetmore Memorial Research Award (2017).
Project title: “Effects of extreme rainfall events on tropical birds: Examining the role of rainfall intensity and duration on foraging activity”
Abstract: Climate change is increasing the occurrence of extreme weather events, including heat, droughts, and floods. How changing rainfall regimes affect birds remains an important knowledge gap. Although effects of heat and drought have been studied in arid systems, effects of increasing rainfall extremes remain poorly understood and depend on the intensity and duration of rainfall events which can have cumulative effects on birds from condition to reproduction. The short-term goals of this project are to examine how the intensity and duration of rainfall events affects bird foraging activity. The “foraging limitation” hypothesis has been proposed as a mechanism for altitudinal migration in pluvial rainforest, which is conceptually similar to the “opportunity cost” hypothesis that heat limits foraging. These two extremes can be thought of as opposite ends of a rainfall continuum in which hot/dry and extremely wet conditions both limit time for animals to find food. This research will help to provide insight into the hygric niches of tropical endotherms.
The long-term goals of this research are to fill a key missing link in ongoing research examining how birds have adapted to extreme and variable weather in montane systems. Building on ten years of ongoing weather data collection in northern Perú with the project Aves del Bosque Montano, a Kessel Fellowship will support installation of in situ rain gauges and weather data loggers with collaborators across the Andes. Establishing ongoing rainfall data collection will increase the value of and help to connect a range of bird projects across the Andes to examine the short- and long-term effects of changing climate in an important biodiversity hotspot. Part of this research will involve developing a simple protocol in Spanish to record foraging activity and behavior of mixed species flocks in relation to rainfall, as well as continued work quantifying resource availability. Additionally, funds will be used to develop several student research projects on avian foraging and rainfall with in-country institutions. This will provide training opportunities and contribute to capacity building for biologists interested in birds across Latin America, as well as connect a network of researchers studying tropical birds.
Follow Dr. Newell’s research: ORCID-ID
Anne Ausems, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Trent University
Dr. Anne Ausems became passionate about working in ornithology, and specifically avian ecology, during her bachelor’s degree (undergraduate) at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and continued working with various passerines around Europe during her master’s degree at the same university, which resulted in an often cited co-authorship on Pied Flycatcher migration. She went on to study four species of storm-petrels in subpolar regions for her Ph.D. at the University of Gdańsk, Poland, focusing on demographics and niche partitioning among the species, for which she was awarded a grant from the Kenneth Williamson Fund. Ausems published four papers and co-authored three more from her Ph.D., and published two during her postdoctoral work at Trent University, Canada. The Kessel Fellowship will help fund her work at Trent on Whimbrel breeding behavior and post-hatch chick survival. Ausems intends to use the Motus network and small radio transmitters to study parental incubation behavior and chick survival. She deployed these devices over the field season of 2024, and will start analyzing the data shortly, when the adults and chicks are migrating southwards. Ausems hopes that this study will provide vital information on post-hatch chick behavior, a part of the life history hardly studied in this species. Hopefully, the results of this project will help us understand some of the causes of the decline of Whimbrel across the Americas.
Project title: “Incubation behavior, parental coordination, post-hatch survival, and first-time migration routes in an Arctic and sub-Arctic breeding shorebird”
Abstract: Shorebird populations are under threat globally, with migratory shorebirds declining at faster rates than resident species. In North America, Arctic breeding species face especially steep declines, calling for urgent conservation action. For protection measures to be effective, in-depth knowledge of the cause of these declines is vital and likely to be multifaceted. While threats faced during migration are often understood as a leading cause of population declines, low reproductive success may also be a driving factor.
Monitoring breeding attempts of Arctic breeding shorebirds often ends when nest fate (i.e., hatched, or failed) becomes known, as the precocial chicks disappear into the surrounding landscape, making it difficult to follow their development and survival. As such, post-hatch survival rates for Arctic breeding species are often unknown, even though they may have considerable effects on population dynamics. Incubating shorebirds coordinate their incubation bouts to optimize their own fitness and that of the nest. Studying parental coordination along with nest success may provide vital information on why certain nests fail.
In this study, I plan to use radio telemetry within the Motus Wildlife Tracking System to study incubation behavior, including parental coordination (i.e., total incubation time and predictability of incubation shift changes), post-hatch chick survival, and inaugural migration in Whimbrel breeding in the Churchill, Manitoba, region. The aim of this study is to investigate post-hatch survival in Whimbrel from Churchill and factors that may affect it. Incubation behavior and parental coordination have rarely been studied in Whimbrel, but it is an important aspect to understand the mechanisms of hatching success. First-time migrating Whimbrels in North America are likely to follow similar directions as adults, but to migrate later, as has been revealed from citizen science data and is the case for the Icelandic population, but needs to be verified with a dedicated tracking approach. Understanding migration timing and behavior of juvenile Whimbrel is vital to protect this naïve and vulnerable part of the population.
Follow Dr. Ausems’ research: ORCID-ID
About the American Ornithological Society
The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an international society dedicated to connecting ornithologists, science, and bird conservation by supporting science that advances the understanding and conservation of birds; promoting broad access to ornithological science; supporting ornithologists throughout their career paths; and fostering a welcoming, diverse, supportive, and dynamic ornithological community. The AOS publishes two top-ranked international scientific journals, Ornithology and Ornithological Applications, and hosts an annual conference that attracts ornithologists from across the globe. Its robust grants program supports student and early-career professional research initiatives. The society’s Check-list of North American Birds serves as the accepted authority for scientific nomenclature and English common names of birds in North and Middle America. The AOS is also a partner with The Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the online Birds of the World, a rich database of species accounts of the world’s birds. The AOS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization serving about 3,000 members globally. For more information, see www.americanornithology.org.