The field of restoration ecology, in which native flora and fauna are re-established to create more sustainable environments, is taking off in the 21st century as researchers become more aware of the potentially negative impacts of invasive, non-native species. Humans are among the “non-natives” in many areas, having taken over as apex predators in many situations. In the Bahamas, the arrival of humans about 1,000 years ago led to a considerable disruption of the natural food chain.

Florida Museum ornithologist David Steadman rinses fossils collected on Abaco Island in the Bahamas. © Photo by Janet Franklin

“People arrived in the Bahamas and soon they wiped out the tortoises, they wiped out the crocodiles, and became a new apex predator capable of eating just about anything, marine or terrestrial,” said Steadman, Florida Museum natural history department chair. “People are also warm-blooded, or homeotherms, so we need more energy per pound of body weight to keep going. This requirement rearranges energy flows. All that gets complicated even further by people wiping out certain species, whether they’re prey species or other predators, and introducing non-native plants and animals.”

Steadman’s research, a collaborative project with two Arizona State University geography professors, focuses on the fossil record of Eleuthera and the two Abaco islands in the Bahamas. The project began in January with a trip to Abaco for the Abaco Science Alliance Conference, a meeting held every two years that involves scientists and includes outreach to local residents and students of all ages.

Scientists and divers recovered fossils including crocodiles, tortoises, snakes and bats from this sinkhole in the Bahamas. © Photo by Curt Bowen, Advanced Diver Magazine

“The conference this year was unbelievably good,” said Steadman, who presented new research showing ancient tortoises were the largest herbivores and “Cuban” crocodiles were the apex terrestrial predators, rather than marine. “It’s not just a scientific conference — you talk to the students and they pick up on so many refreshing ways of looking at things. My best conversation during those two days was with three 11-year-old boys who came up to me afterward and just had these great questions about blue holes (flooded sinkholes containing fossils) that they know of in their neighborhood.”

Because the Bahamas are comprised of 100 percent limestone, or raised carbonate coral sand, plant and animal fossils are exceptionally well-preserved, he said.

“The organic fractions of the plants and animals there are still intact, so we can do radiocarbon dating to get a precise chronology,” Steadman said. “Then, we can analyze stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to tell us how these animals are functioning in terrestrial ecosystems versus freshwater versus marine, and who’s eating who.”

The idea for the project was spurred by scuba divers’ recent discoveries of abundant fossils in blue holes, named for their deep blue color caused by the shadows of their surrounding walls. Steadman has studied some fossils from blue holes, including two extinct tortoise species and other animals no longer found on the islands, including the Cuban Crocodile and Cooper’s Hawk, among other birds, snakes, bats and lizards.

Steadman measures the width of trees on Abaco Island in the Bahamas. © Photo by Janet Franklin

Other terrestrial specimens, including charcoal, pollen, spores and plant macrofossils, will be used to evaluate rates of biological change. Steadman plans to begin excavations in Eleuthera during the University of Florida’s 2012 spring break, when he will lead fieldwork with his island biogeography class.

“I’ll have a lot of eager minds and strong backs to excavate fossils in dry caves,” he said. “We’ll have the scuba divers there to bring fossils out of blue holes and we’ll be surveying modern lizards, birds and plants to give the students a pretty intense six days of digging up the past, as well as understanding what’s happening on the islands today.”

As low-lying oceanic islands, the Bahamas are particularly vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters, and Steadman hopes the research on how prehistoric and contemporary plant and animal communities responded to long-term environmental fluctuations will shed light on how they might respond to climate change in the future.

“Some islands are pretty well trashed now, while on other islands, the ecosystem is still functioning in a fairly natural way,” he said. “But even on the most ‘pristine’ islands, the ecosystems are functioning differently than in pre-human times. If we can determine the natural background level of change that these surviving plants and animals can adapt to, we can use the information to try to come up with conservation programs that would actually improve the future of these islands.”

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the three-year, $446,000 project will make the collection at the Florida Museum more readily available to scientists and the public for bird research and identification.

The project will involve more than 2,200 reel-to-reel and cassette tapes of a diverse collection of bird sounds, with a primary focus on New World birds. The digitization process, which begins in January, will result in public access to the recordings via the museum’s Web site. The museum plans to one day have all its recordings available online. The only sounds currently available are about 100 recordings of Florida birds.

“Virtually the entire collection will be available in some form on the museum Web site,” said Thomas Webber, ornithology collections manager at the Florida Museum, on the University of Florida campus. “It includes excellent field recordings dating back to the 1960s from a number of active amateurs and prominent professionals.”

The tapes, currently stored at the Florida Museum, will be shipped in batches to the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics at Ohio State University to be digitized.

“Some of the recordings may be irreplaceable,” said Douglas A. Nelson, director of the Borror Lab. “In many cases, the recordings may be unique and may be of species that occupy habitats under increasing threat from human exploitation.”

The Florida Museum has the Western Hemisphere’s second largest collection of bird sound recordings in terms of number of species and the third largest in terms of the actual number of recordings. Cornell University and the Borror Lab have the other top collections.

The Borror Lab is a pioneer at converting analog tape collections to digital media, and UF has worked with researchers there for decades, Webber said.

The grant will pay for equipment and staff time to make and store the digital copies and build upon the museum’s current bird sound database.

Webber estimates the entire collection will fit on a single hard drive. UF will store the analog tapes after they’re digitized. Copies of the digital recordings will be housed at both the Borror Lab and Florida Museum on hard drives and in CD form.

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Studies have shown that analog tape degrades after 40 to 50 years. Transferring the recordings to digital format will ensure their permanence, Nelson said. Florida Museum staff will also have an easier task providing copies of the recordings to scientists, governmental agencies, other museums and bird watchers.

Currently, requests require that someone find and correctly cue the needed reel in the database and then make a digital recording of the specific bird sound, Webber said. The process is time-consuming, and repeated use eventually reduces the tape’s sound quality.

Unused analog recordings also face the risk of deterioration as the oxide coating starts to break down. Magnetized recording patterns also can bleed through to adjacent segments of the tape.

The Florida Museum plans to re-issue some of the 26 bird-sound compilations, a total of more than 1,400 sounds, originally produced by J.W. Hardy, the museum’s curator of ornithology and bioacoustics from 1973 to 1995. Those audio cassette compilations include “Sounds of New World Owls” and “Voices of the Wrens.” Webber said the recordings were extremely popular when cassettes were the standard audio format.

Webber’s priority will be to re-issue recordings of birds that are more readily heard than seen, such as owls and other nocturnal birds, a total of about 200 species. He also plans to issue one of Hardy’s most popular recordings, “Sounds of Florida’s Birds.” The recording forms the basis of the museum’s current Web page of bird sounds, www.flmnh.ufl.edu/birds/sounds.htm, and provides an audio snapshot for featured birds.

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Source: Thomas Webber, 352-273-1972, twebber@flmnh.ufl.edu
Writer: Bill Kanapaux, bkanapaux@flmnh.ufl.edu
Media contact: Paul Ramey, 352-273-2054, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

The Austin Award is given to recognize excellence in natural science research in honor of long-time Florida Museum ornithologist, Oliver Austin.

This year’s recipient, Christine Edwards, graduated from the University of Florida in 2007 with her Ph.D. in botany and now works as a postdoctoral research associate in botany at the University of Wyoming. Her graduate work focused on related species of mint plants found in the Southeastern United States under primary supervisor Pam Soltis, Florida Museum of Natural History curator of molecular systematics and evolutionary genetics.

“Christy was a superb student,” said Doug Soltis, one of Edwards’ other supervisors and Florida Museum affiliate curator in the molecular lab. “She is very hardworking, energetic and a great member of the lab group here.”

The Bullen Award is given in honor of influential Florida Museum archaeologist Ripley P. Bullen, whose work spanned the 1940′s and 1950′s. Recipients of the Bullen award are chosen for excellence in research of the anthropology of Florida and the Caribbean Basin.

This year’s recipient, Jane Anne Blakney-Bailey worked with Florida Museum archaeology curator Jerald Milanich while researching Seminole and Creek Indian patterns in the Paynes Town Seminole Settlement. Her doctoral research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Florida Department of State’s Division of Historical Resources and the Seminole War Foundation.

Blakney-Bailey now works as a station archaeologist at the Toltec Mounds Archaeological Site near Little Rock, Ark., and is a faculty member at the University of Arkansas.

“Dr. Blakney-Bailey’s research for her dissertation at the University of Florida was outstanding,” Milanich said. “It provided a new understanding of the culture of these Native Americans when they were establishing themselves in Florida.”

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Writer: Morgan Lamborn
Media contact: Paul Ramey, 352-273-2054, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

New genera of living birds are rare discoveries — fewer than one per year is announced globally. David Steadman and Andrew Kratter, ornithologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History, turned up the surprising new discovery on a collecting expedition in the Solomon Islands. Theirs is the first frogmouth from these islands to be caught by scientists in more than 100 years. They immediately recognized it was something different.

Kratter and Steadman are co-authors to a study analyzing the frogmouth’s morphology, or physical form, and DNA in comparison to two other living genera of frogmouths. The findings are published in the April print edition of Ibis: The International Journal of Avian Science, in a paper that describes the bird as a new genus and species, now named Rigidipenna inexpectata.

“This discovery underscores that birds on remote Pacific islands are still poorly known, scientifically speaking,” Steadman said. “Without the help of local hunters, we probably would have overlooked the frogmouth.”

Originally, the bird was misclassified as a subspecies of the Australian Marbled Frogmouth, Podargus ocellatus. The blunder went undetected for decades, until a collecting trip led by Kratter in 1998 turned up a specimen on Isabel, a 1,500-square-mile island in the Solomons. Today, the only museum specimen of this bird in the world, with an associated skin and skeleton, is housed at the Florida Museum.

Frogmouths are predatory birds named for their strikingly wide, strong beak that resembles a frog’s mouth; but their beak also sports a small, sharp hook more like an owl’s. Steadman said their beaks are like no other bird’s in the world. They eat insects, rodents, small birds — and yes, even frogs.

For perspective on the scale of evolutionary difference between genera, consider that modern humans and Neanderthals are different species within the same genus (Homo), while chimpanzees are our living relatives from a closely related genus (Pan), but that we share the same taxonomic family (Hominidae) with our chimp cousins.

The Solomon Islands Frogmouth differs from other frogmouths in a number of significant ways. First, it is probably not as accomplished of a flier because its eight tail-feathers, instead of the typical 10 to 12 on other frogmouths, curtail its lift potential, and its much coarser feathers reduce maneuverability.

“These are island adaptations that work to keep the bird on the island,” Steadman said.

Second, it has distinct barring on the primary wing feathers and tail feathers, where other frogmouths are more uniform. Its speckles are larger, and the white spots on its breast and underbelly are more pronounced than on other frogmouths.

Two other genera of frogmouths exist: one in southeast Asia and the other in Australia and New Guinea. The Solomon Islands Frogmouth is known to inhabit three islands: Isabel, Bougainville and Guadalcanal.

Van Remsen, curator of birds at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, said that this new frogmouth genus serves as a poignant reminder that birds of the tropics, particularly from southeast Asia to Melanesia, have been paid scant attention by science.

“They’ve barely been studied, much of what we know comes from antiquated or casual observations,” Remsen said. “The biology of birds in these regions is, to a great extent, obscured by stale, hand-me-down classifications from an earlier era. A combination of detailed morphological and genetic analyses reveal that this frogmouth — formerly dismissed as just a race of an existing species — actually cannot be placed confidently in any existing genus, and so the data demand naming a new one.”

Storrs Olson, a senior zoologist with the Smithsonian Institution, said that frogmouths are an enigmatic group of birds to begin with.

“That this should prove to be such a distinctive new genus, which it unquestionably is, has profound biogeographical implications and represents a real breakthrough in elucidating the evolutionary history of the family,” Olson said.

Nigel Cleere of the The Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom is the lead author for the paper and additional co-authors include: Michael Braun and Christopher Huddleston of the Smithsonian Institution, Christopher Filardi of the University of Washington’s Burke Museum and Guy Dutson.

Writer: DeLene Beeland
Media contact: Paul Ramey, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

Source: David Steadman
(352) 392-1721, ext. 465
dws@flmnh.ufl.edu

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — “The Sopranos” have some competition — brown-headed cowbirds.

Cowbirds have long been known to lay eggs in the nests of other birds, which then raise the cowbirds’ young as their own.

Sneaky, perhaps, but not Scarface.

Now, however, a University of Florida study finds that cowbirds actually ransack and destroy the nests of warblers that don’t buy into the ruse and raise their young.

Jeff Hoover, an avian ecologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, is the lead author on the first study to document experimental evidence of this peeper payback — retaliation to encourage acceptance of parasitic eggs.

Findings will be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences March 5.

“It’s the female cowbirds who are running the mafia racket at our study site,” said Hoover, who has a joint appointment with the Illinois Natural History Survey. “Our study shows many of them returned and ransacked the nest when we removed the parasitic egg.”

So-called “brood parasitic birds” lay eggs in the nests of host birds that raise the parasite’s offspring, usually at the expense of some of their own. The brown-headed cowbird parasitizes more than 100 host species, including many Neotropical migratory birds such as warblers, tanagers and vireos. Prothonotary warblers were used for this study because they almost always accept cowbird eggs, Hoover said.

Hosts that use their beaks to grasp or puncture parasitic eggs and remove them from the nest are called “ejecters.” “Accepter” hosts raise parasitic eggs.

“Retaliatory mafia behavior in cowbirds makes hosts’ acceptance of cowbird eggs a better proposition than ejection,” Hoover said. “The accepting warblers in our study produced more of their own offspring, on average, than those where we ejected cowbird eggs.”

Hosts may lose some, but not all, of their biological offspring by accepting parasitism. The retaliatory behavior of ransacking nests encourages warblers to raise the cowbirds’ offspring.

“We wanted to determine if the cowbirds were responsible for nest predation after we removed cowbird eggs from parasitized warbler nests,” Hoover said. To test for this, Hoover collaborated with Scott Robinson, Florida Museum Ordway eminent scholar and natural history chair, to manipulate cowbird access to warbler nests in the Cache River watershed of southern Illinois. The researchers monitored 182 predator-proofed nests over four breeding seasons.

Hoover and Robinson found that warbler nests were ransacked 56 percent of the time when researchers experimentally removed the parasitic eggs and cowbirds were allowed nest access, versus only 6 percent when the cowbird eggs were accepted and cowbirds had nest access. No nests were ransacked when researchers removed cowbird eggs and cowbirds were denied nest access. Together, these results implicate cowbirds and provide evidence of mafia behavior.

“We also found evidence for ‘farming’ behavior,” Hoover said. “Cowbirds ‘farm’ a non-parasitized nest by destroying its contents so that the host will build another. The cowbird then syncs its egg laying with the hosts’ ‘renest’ attempt.”

Hoover found that warbler nests that were never parasitized but that cowbirds had access to, were ransacked 20 percent of the time. “Cowbirds parasitized 85 percent of the renests, which is strong supporting evidence for both farming and mafia behavior,” he said.

Hoover and Robinson’s results imply that cowbirds actively monitor nests they parasitize — which supports the idea that cowbirds continue to visit nests they have parasitized to see the results of their handiwork.

Stephen Rothstein, a zoology professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara, said other studies have shown evidence contrary to mafia and farming behaviors.

“Video surveillance would show the proportion of nest predation attributable to cowbirds,” Rothstein said. “The phenomenon may be perfectly true for these warblers, but that doesn’t mean it holds true for other species, especially those that aren’t nesting in special circumstances. Nevertheless, this new study may extend our knowledge of the extent to which parasitic cowbirds may have evolved tactics to facilitate their parasitism.”

Hoover said his future research includes video surveillance of individually banded female cowbirds and warbler nests.

Writer: DeLene Beeland
Media contact: Paul Ramey, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

The lecture is free and open to the public. Guests will learn about the precarious life of birds on islands, with an emphasis on their evolution, ecology and extinction.

Steadman has been published in more than 50 scientific publications and is currently conducting field projects in Fiji, the Cook Islands, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago. He also has been a University of Florida Research Foundation professor for five years.

The Florida Museum will offer a new program for children during the lecture, “Sunday Snoop.” Adults can take a break and enjoy the lecture while museum staff entertain children ages 4-10 for an hour with fun activities and a guided tour. Registration for “Sunday Snoop” is $5 and pre-registration is required. When book signings are held after a lecture, children will be returned to parents at the end of the lecture portion of the program.

Contact: Paul Ramey, (352) 846-2000, pramey@ufl.edu
Writer: Kristin Ede

Participants will have the chance to discover hundreds of fossils at Thomas Farm, an 18-million-year-old site located in Gilchrist County that has already produced the remains of more than 60 species of extinct amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

David Steadman, the Florida Museum’s curator of ornithology, will lead the outings. The trips include dinner on Thursday through lunch on Sunday, beverages, complete access to the fossil site and its camping facilities, evening lectures by fossil experts on Friday and Saturday night, expert paleontologists and a chance to make scientific discoveries.

Registration is $275 per person and pre-registration is required. Each dig has a limit of 14 people. Participants must be 16 or older and accompanied by an adult if under 18. For more information visit http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/ponyexpress/pe_adventures.htm or call (352) 392-1721, ext. 464.

Writer: Kristin Ede
Media Contact: Paul Ramey, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu