David E. Willard

David Ela Willard (born September 30, 1946 ) is an American ethologist and ornithologist . His main research interests are the community structure of birds and bird migration .

Life

In 1968 Willard received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton College , Minnesota . In 1975 he was with the dissertation The feeding behavior and ecology of five species of herons at the Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge, New Jersey at Princeton University for Ph.D. PhD. In 1976 he became an employee at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago . From 1978 to 2012, he was the first collection manager for the Bird Department of the Field Museum of Natural History. Since 2004 he has been the collection manager of the zoological department of the Field Museum of Natural History.

In addition to maintaining the collection, he was involved in expeditions to Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, Uganda, the Philippines, the Marshall Islands, the Central African Republic, Madagascar and Malawi. He also initiated a rescue program for birds killed by striking a window, which has resulted in 4000 local bird specimens being added to the bird collection every year since 1978.

Together with John W. Fitzpatrick , Willard studied the population density and distribution of birds in the Eastern Great Lakes . Willard built a large database over a period of 18 years in which he compiled data on the spring and autumn migration of birds in the Chicago Lakes. Together with Douglas F. Stotz , he investigates the patterns and timing of bird migration in this region. At the international level, he conducts studies on the altitude distribution of various tropical mountain birds. In 1979 he described the blue sun nymph ( Heliangelus regalis ) together with John W. Fitzpatrick and John Terborgh . In 1990 he and Fitzpatrick described the manua ant catcher ( Cercomacra manu ). In 1991, together with Scott M. Lanyon and Douglas F. Stotz, he described the Mato-Grosso ground ant shrike ( Clytoctantes atrogularis ). In 1977, together with John W. Fitzpatrick and John Terborgh, he was the first to describe the bandy-wing wren ( Henicorhina leucoptera ).

Dedication names

In 2001 André-Alexander Weller and Swen C. Renner named the subspecies Heliodoxa xanthogonys willardi of the green brilliant hummingbird in honor of David Willard. In 2010 the gray-eyed shrike was described as a separate species Laniarius willardi and named after Willard. Today it is considered a subspecies of the ditch shrike ( Laniarius poensis )

literature

• David Ela Willard. In: American Men & Women of Science: A Biographical Directory of Today's Leaders in Physical, Biological, and Related Sciences , Gale, 2008. Biography in Context, Online . Retrieved January 28, 2018
• Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, Michael Grayson: The Eponym Dictionary of Birds. Bloomsbury Publishing 2014 (short biography)

Web links

• History of the bird department of the Fieldmuseum of Natural History (with a short biographical entry about David Willard)
• Employee profile at the Fieldmuseum of Natural History