George F. Gee

George Francis Gee (born April 15, 1937 in Milton , Massachusetts ) is an American animal physiologist .

Life

Gee received his bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts in 1960 . In 1962 he graduated with Scripture A genetic and physiological study of natural variation within sex in the morphology of the genital eminence of the chicken to the master at the University of Maine and in 1965 he was with a dissertation on the environmental and reproductive physiology of birds to Ph .D. PhD from the University of Georgia . From 1965 to 1968, he taught courses as an officer in the United States Air Force and conducted studies in support of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program .

In the fall of 1968, Gee joined the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as an animal physiologist . In collaboration with four other scientists (a behavioral scientist, a nutritionist, a veterinarian and a wildlife biologist) he supported the planning, installation and equipment of an animal laboratory building, an incubation facility, an animal hospital and enclosures for keeping breeding stocks.

His duties in the Endangered Wildlife Research Program included working on physiological and reproductive problems that endangered species have in both human care and the wild. His research focused on the reproductive physiology of captive species and issues related to their survival in the wild.

Gee was responsible for some teaching and advisory roles within the US Fish and Wildlife Service as well as with scientists in zoos and universities. His research led to the development and implementation of new procedures, some of which were adopted in other reproductive centers. Lighting programs to increase egg production in whooping cranes , ridgway quails and Aleutian Canada geese have increased egg production since the mid-1970s. An artificial insemination program developed in the early 1970s for endangered whooping cranes and Mississippi sand hill cranes is now responsible for all of their fertile egg production.

Through Gee's efforts and the advice of his colleagues, the world first breeding of the South American snail kite in captivity was achieved in 1975 . Preservation of the gene pool has led Gees to research interest in semen cryopreservation . Since 1977 he and his colleague Thomas J. Sexton have developed techniques for conserving the sperm of cranes, ducks, geese and bunting.

In 1996, Gee co-wrote and edited Cranes: Their Biology, Husbandry, and Conservation with David H. Ellis and Claire M. Mirande . From 2009 to 2010 he was President of the Whooping Crane Conservation Association (WCCA).

literature

• George Searles (Ed.): American Pheasant and Waterfowl Society Magazine , No. 80, 1980 (portrait on page 2)
• Thomas L. Quay, John B. Funderburg, Jr., David S. Lee, Eloise F. Potter, Chandler S. Robbins (Eds.): Biographies of Contributors In: The Seaside Sparrow, Its Biology and Management. Proceedings of a Symposium Held at Raleigh, North Carolina October 1-2, 1981 Sponsored by the North Carolina Biological Survey and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Occasional Papers of the North Carolina Biological Survey 1983–5, 1983 (short biography on page 169)

Web links

• Literature by and about George F. Gee in the WorldCat bibliographic database