1. Biology and Conservation of Birds
ESRM 456
Biology and Conservation of Birds
John Marzluff
123E Anderson

2. Course Web Page Web site Class email list
Class list
Important to monitor your u. account for announcements related to class notes, etc.

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 3-5 assignments worth 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 13, 830am, Condon 113; 200 Points). The final exam will be comprehensive.
RESEARCH PAPER (due Nov. 28; 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
In US we eat 8 billion chickens per year and 50 billion eggs

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
Check out Thor Hanson’s 2011 book “Feathers”

10. Birds are Good Hunters

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

12. They are diverse and everywhere
~10,000 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
Apapane, iiwi, amakihi

15. Important Early Players
John J. Audubon
( )

16. Alexander Wilson
( )
John Townsend

17. John Burroughs, John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell
Set conservation policy
and reserved important lands, especially in the west
Heightened awareness of
Eastern and Western nature
Was a naturalist
with Custer, worked with
TR to start Audubon

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

19. 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

20. Unique Skeleton

21. 4-chambered heart

22. Homethermic,rapid BMR

23. Lungs and air sacs

24. Highly developed brain and nervous system

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

27. Birds Diverged from Reptiles after Mammals
From Tony Angell

28. But From Which Reptiles?
All agree birds came from Archosaurs (Archosauria is a crown group, consisting of birds, crocodiles, and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor), 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 (the most common view), or crocodylia

29. The Prevalent View
Dinosaurs are icons of prehistory, and remain an important part of
the modern world in the form of some 10,000 living species of birds.
Feathers, eggs,
and parental care are
known among the
dinosaurs
Dinosaurs are icons of prehistory, and remain an important part of
the modern world in the form of some 10,000 living species of birds.
(Brusatte et al Earth-Science Reviews 101:68-100)

30. Egg Color Supports BMT
The internal nodes are (1) Archosauria, (2) Dinosauria, (3) Ornithischia, (4) Saurischia, (5) Eumaniraptora, (6) Paraves and (7) Aves. The egg icon in the phylogeny labels Eumaniraptora. All terminal taxa are represented by an icon indicating egg shape, and an example of reconstructed colour. If pigments are present, the area below the spectral function is coloured in blue (biliverdin) or orange (protoporphyrin IX), and all pigment bands are labelled with either blue (biliverdin) or red (protoporphyrin IX) dots. Relative Raman band intensities may vary owing to differential preservation. Photographs show the samples and nest icons encode three nesting strategies: buried, (partially) open ground and open tree nesting. AU, arbitrary units.
Wiemann, et al. 2018, Nature 563:

31. Recent Evaluation of Alternative Hypotheses (James and Pourtless (2009, Ornithological Monographs No. 66)
Closest Relatives of Archaeopteryx and other birds are are maniraptoran,
theropod dinosaurs (idea known as BMT hypothesis)

32. Archaeopteryx as Oldest Bird
(Chiappe and Dyke 2002)

33. Archaeopteryx v. Velocoraptor
Greg Erickson, Florida State University

34. (Chiappe and Dyke 2002)

35. A New Fossil Godefroit et al
A New Fossil Godefroit et al Small Feathered Dinosaur, Basal Bird, The Avialae Clade

36. A New Phylogeny

37. A New Phylogeny

38. But modern bird divergence occurred even earlier in Cretaceous
But modern bird divergence occurred even earlier in Cretaceous. Archaeornithura meemannae in clade containing modern birds (Ornithuromorpha) found in China130.7 MYA
(Wang et al. 2015, Nature Communications, 5 May 2015)

39. Hypotheses Are Still Being Tested
Greg Erickson, Florida State University

40. So, What is a Bird?
The Class Aves is “a node-based clade that includes Archaeopteryx, modern birds, their most recent common ancestor, and all its descendents” (James and Pourtless 2009)
Birds—as so defined--share only 3 derived morphological attributes (Chiappe 2002)
Caudal margin of the external naris
nearly reaches or overlaps the rostral border
of the antorbital cavity
A prominent acromion in the scapula
A pointy and shallow postacetabular wing of the ilium that has less that 50% the dorsovetral depth of the preacetabular wing at the hip socket (acetabulum)
The Clade Avialae, which is a sister group of Dromaeosaurids
If it has a flight wing and avian feathers it’s a bird (Feduccia 2013)

41. Our Insights are Products of the Analysis
THE list of shared, derived characteristics held by all and only birds are questioned by some and reflect the author’s scoring schemes and pool of animals that are compared. Other analyses by other people provide some differences. As more fossils are discovered, scored, and analyzed the features of birds and the search for their closest relatives will become clearer.

42. Birding would have been dangerous