Cameron B. Kepler

Cameron Bradford Kepler (born March 22, 1938 in Hollywood , California ) is an American ornithologist and wildlife biologist . His research interests are in the avifauna of Puerto Rico , Hawaii and other Pacific islands.

Life

Kepler grew up in La Jolla on the Pacific coast . In 1956 he received his Bachelor of Arts and in 1962 he graduated with a Master of Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara . From 1961 to 1962 he was a teaching assistant at the University of California and from 1963 to 1964 at Cornell University . From 1964 to 1966 he was a research assistant at the Smithsonian Institution . In 1966 he married the New Zealand biologist Angela Kay Brownscombe , from whom he is now divorced. This marriage resulted in two children. 1968 he was with the dissertationThe breeding biology of the blue-faced booby (Sula dactylatra personata) on Green Island, Kure Atoll to Ph.D. PhD from Cornell University. Between 1971 and 1973 he had a 15-month postdoctoral research stay at the University of Oxford .

From 1968 until his retirement in 1999, Kepler worked as a wildlife biologist in the Biological Resources Department at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center of the United States Geological Survey and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Laurel , Maryland , where he studied the ecology and social behavior of studied endangered bird species. These included the discovery (1968) and first description (1972) of the Puerto Rican wood warbler as well as research work on the Puerto Rican Amazon (from 1968 to 1971), the Puerto Rican night jar (1972), the whooping crane (from 1973 to 1977) and about the Michigan warbler (from 1987 to 1997). From 1977 to 1987 he lived on the island of Maui and conducted field studies of forest birds throughout the Hawaiian archipelago, including two summers in the forests of Kaua'i . In 1981 he discovered the first nest of the endangered Palmerklarinos ( Myadestes palmeri ) on Kaua'i. In 1996 Kepler published an article in the Wilson Bulletin about the nesting behavior of the white-cheeked honeycreeper from the island of Maui, which had been considered extinct since 2004 , after he discovered the first nest of this species in 1986.

Kepler toured all 50 states in the United States and nearly 100 countries, including the Pacific Islands of Fiji , Samoa , Tahiti , the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands . He also had five stays in Antarctica .

Kepler published several books in collaboration with his wife, including Haleakala: A Guide to the Mountain and Majestic Molokai: A Nature Lover's Guide (both 1992) and The natural history of Caroline Atoll, Southern Line Islands. Part I. History, physiography, botany, and isle descriptions (1994). In 1986 he published the book Forest bird communities of the Hawaiian islands. Their Dynamics, Ecology, and Conservation and in 1987 he co-wrote The Parrots of Luquillo: Natural History and Conservation of the Puerto Rico Parrot with Noel Snyder and James W. Wiley . In addition, Kepler was involved in the articles on the narrow-feathered honey eater , the curly tails and the white-cheeked hawk bird in the standard work Birds of North America .

Dedication names

In 1991 Storrs Lovejoy Olson and Helen Frances James honored Angela and Cameron Kepler in the type epithet of the extinct Hawaiian rail species Porzana keplerorum .

literature

• Robert D. Craig, Russell T. Clement: Who's Who in Oceania, 1980-1981. Institute for Polynesian Studies, Brigham Young University-Hawaii Campus, 1980 ISBN 978-0-939154-13-5 , pp. 100-101
• Michael J. Scott, Cameron B. Kepler: Endangered Species Research in Hawaii: The Early Years (1965-87). In: Matthew C. Perry (Ed.): The History of Patuxent: America's Wildlife Research Story , US Geological Survey Circular 1422, 2016, p. 187

Web links

• Dr. Cameron B. Kepler. In: Pacific Biodiversity Information Forum, 2007 (short biography)
• Literature by and about Cameron B. Kepler in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Bibliography at Researchgate