Species Limits and Taxonomy in Birds

How we determine what entities we call species has major impacts on ornithology at many levels; the units used in every field of scientific research and that are the focus of conservation and legislative planning are the result of this data-driven process. Once species limits are decided, the scientific and English names that we use …

Management of breeding birds using conspecific attraction requires better knowledge of when, where, and why it is likely to be effective

By Christa L. LeGrande-Rolls and Jonathon J. Valente Linked paper: Conspecific attraction for conservation and management of terrestrial breeding birds: Current knowledge and future research directions by Jonathon J. Valente, Christa L. LeGrande-Rolls, James W. Rivers, Anna M. Tucker, Richard A. Fischer, and Matthew G. Betts, Ornithological Applications In 2012, we were working on a …

AOS Welcomes Dr. Judith Scarl as Its Next Executive Director

CHICAGO, Ill. — The governing Council of the American Ornithological Society (AOS) today announces the appointment of Dr. Judith Scarl as its next executive director and chief executive officer, effective 6 July 2021. Dr. Scarl succeeds Melinda Pruett-Jones as the second woman executive to lead the society. The AOS formed in 2016 after a merger …

Celebrating World Migratory Bird Day!

World Migratory Bird Day and Global Big Day are this Saturday, 8 May! We hope you’ll join us in this global celebration to raise awareness about the importance of conserving migratory birds and their habitats. We’ve pulled together a few Wing Beat posts from this past year that highlight research findings from migration-related papers that …

How a labor of love became a multi-decade study of climate and bird dynamics on a historic subalpine Sierra Nevada study site

By Meredith Swett Walker, The Institute for Bird Populations Linked Paper: Climate variation drives dynamics and productivity of a subalpine breeding bird community by David F. DeSante and James F. Saracco, Ornithological Applications Back in the summer of 1977, Dr. David DeSante, then an assistant professor at Reed College, took a group of students to …

Congratulations to the 2021 AOS Student and Postdoc Research Award Winners

AOS is proud to recognize the students and postdoctoral researchers who have been awarded funding through our 2021 Student and Postdoctoral Research Awards program! These annual awards, each up to $2,500, honor early-career ornithologists doing research that advances our understanding of avian biology and bird conservation. The Research Awards Committee puts a great deal of …

Revealing the evolutionary enigmas of the song of a neotropical rainforest bird on the Brazilian coast

By Adriana Acero and Marcos Maldonado-Coelho Linked Paper: Ecological and evolutionary drivers of geographic variation in songs of a Neotropical suboscine bird: The Drab-breasted Bamboo Tyrant (Hemitriccus diops, Rhynchocyclidae), by Adriana Carolina Acero-Murcia, Fábio Raposo do Amaral, Fábio C. de Barros, Tiago da Silva Ribeiro, Cristina Y. Miyaki, Marcos Maldonado-Coelho, Ornithology. Who has ever wondered …

AOS statement of solidarity with Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander communities

The following is a message from AOS President Michael Webster, President-Elect Colleen Handel, and the members of the AOS Diversity & Inclusion Committee, co-chaired by Sharon Gill and Viviana Ruiz Gutierrez. We write to express the American Ornithological Society’s (AOS’s) solidarity with the many Asian, and Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities and to condemn …

AOS welcomes new event coordinator

Hi, I’m Lauren Gates, the new event coordinator for AOS; I’m so excited to join this team and support the work of the many AOS member volunteers! I hope to bring extraordinary energy, enthusiasm, and passion to AOS in this next chapter of my career. I recently moved from Atlanta, Ga. to Chicago, Ill., and …

AOS Community Forum

We hope you’ll join us online on Wednesday, 24 March at 5:00 p.m. (EDT) for our next quarterly AOS Community Forum, which we look forward to hosting. For this webinar, we’ve invited the leaders of the Society’s various funding programs designed to support, recognize, and advance the careers of our student, postdoc, and early professional …