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ESRM 456

ESRM 456 . Biology and Conservation of Birds John Marzluff 123E Anderson 206 616 6883 corvid@u.washington.edu. Course Web Page. Web site http://courses.washington.edu/vseminar Follow links to ornithology (field and lecture) Class email list

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ESRM 456

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  1. ESRM 456 Biology and Conservation of Birds John Marzluff 123E Anderson 206 616 6883 corvid@u.washington.edu

  2. Course Web Page • Web site • http://courses.washington.edu/vseminar • Follow links to ornithology (field and lecture) • Class email list • Important to monitor your u. account for announcements related to class notes, etc. • esrm456a_au09@u.washington.edu

  3. Assignments and Grading • CRITICAL THOUGHT EXERCISES (100 Points). Throughout the quarter I will provide materials for you to evaluate (e.g., conservation plans, scientific papers, etc) and discuss. Each student will turn in a 1 page summary of their review and discussion. There will be 5 assignments worth 20 points each. • MIDTERM EXAM (100 Points). My exams include long essay and discussion problems. The midterm will include all material covered up to that point and will be a take-home exam. • FINAL EXAM (DEC 17, 830am, Wink 201; 200 Points). The final exam will be comprehensive. • RESEARCH PAPER (due NOVEMBER 30; 100 Points). You can choose the topic of your choice that involves bird biology or conservation and write a research paper that reviews and synthesizes the relevant scientific literature. Pose questions for future study. No more than 5 pages in length (double spaced), not including references or tables/figures.

  4. Why Birds? • Taste great • Look nice • Culturally important • Useful in sport and work • Interesting and everywhere • Need active conservation

  5. Birds are Tasty

  6. Subsistence Among Native Peoples Harvest of arctic birds: early 20th century

  7. Egging Starting in the 1840s… “Doc Robinson came west to start a theatre company but soon discovered more money was to be made by stealing. He plundered eggs from the common murres nesting at the Farallons and sold them for $1.75 a dozen. The Farallon Egg Company was soon formed and every May through July ten to fifteen men gathered, packaged, shipped and sold the eggs. During the early days 600,000 eggs were taken per year; an estimated 14 million eggs were removed in a 40-year period. The original murre population of a half million was reduced to several thousand by the turn of the century.” From, M. Ellis. History of the Farallon Islands: an essay Egging on SE Farallon Island, California

  8. Egging Laysan & Black-footed Albatross eggs being harvested on Midway Island. Early 20th century.

  9. Feathers are Pretty and Useful

  10. Birds are Good Hunters

  11. They are Reliable Raven saving Elijah Swiss Army with carrier pigeons Early 19th century pigeon

  12. They are diverse and everywhere • 9700 species in world • 650 in US and Canada

  13. Hawaiian Drepanids--Splendid Isolation • Adaptive Radiation • Single ancestor, radiation in bill shape to exploit variety of resources • Convergent Evolution • Bill shape converges with mainland species utilizing similar resources (hummingbirds, grossbeaks)

  14. Hawaiian Drepanids--Deadly Isolation • Extinction and Endangerment due to lack of resistance to exotics • humans, mosquitoes, rodents • Trophic Cascade Effects • loss of pollinators leads to plant endangerment

  15. Important Early Players John J. Audubon (1785-1851)

  16. John Townsend Alexander Wilson (1766-1813)

  17. John Burroughs (right.)and John Muir (left)

  18. Development of Academic Ornithology Cornell University-Lab of O U.California-Berkeley-MVZ Joseph Grinnell Alden Miller T. Howell- D. Manuwal Frank Pitelka- S. West Ned Johnson Charles Sibley Robert Storer Arthur Allen Olin Pettingill George Sutton Ludlow Grissom John Emlen U. Illinois Charles Kendeigh – Russell Balda – J. Marzluff

  19. Peter Kellogg Arthur Allen James Tanner

  20. Ornithological Societies of North America A.O.U. W.O.S. C.O.S. A.F.O.

  21. Typical avian features 1. feathers 2. unique skull single occipital condyle cranial kinesis bills without teeth (in modern birds) gizzard (grinding or storage-crop) 3. hollow bones, many fusions 4. eggs 5. chambered heart 6. homeothermic, rapid BMR 7. lungs and air sacs 8. highly developed brain and nervous system

  22. Unique Skeleton

  23. 4-chambered heart

  24. Homethermic,rapid BMR

  25. Lungs and air sacs

  26. Highly developed brain and nervous system

  27. Early Evolution and Radiation of Birds • Mesozoic era—age of reptiles • Birds evolved from reptiles • Archaeopteryx 150 my in Jurasic

  28. But From Which Reptiles? • All agree birds came from Archosaurs (thecodonts and their derivatives), but which group? • Crocodylia (crocs and gators) • Saurischia (reptile hip dinos) • Ornithischia (bird hip dinos) • Pterosauria (flying reptiles) • Thecodontia (ancestral group) Hypotheses abound as to whether birds evolved from basal thecodonts, saurischians (which gave rise to carnivorous therapods as is shown in above diagram), or crocodylia

  29. Recent Evalution of Alternative Hypotheses (James and Pourtless (2009, Ornithological Monographs No. 66) Dogma: birds are maniraptoran, theropod dinosaurs (BMT)

  30. But? • Maybe birds are early derivatives from archosaurs, crocs, products of multiple evolution • Maybe maniraptorans are birds not dinosaurs!

  31. Cladistic analysis is unable to determine which groups are sister to birds

  32. “At present the origin of birds is an open question.” (James and Pourtless 2009) • Three hypotheses cannot be distinguished • Early archosaur, crocodillian, or theropod ancestors are all still in running • Support for the notion that some maniraptorans are birds more derived than Archaeopteryx • Little progress recently because theropod origin has taken the status of dogma and only received verifactionist approach to “testing” rather than falsificationist approach, which science demands.

  33. Birding would have been dangerous

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