François Vuilleumier

Is there ecomorphological convergence among mediterranean bird communities of Chile, California, and France?

The aim of this work is to evaluate the soundness of the concept of ecomorphological convergence among communities of organisms living in different parts of the world but in similar types of environments. According to this widely accepted notion, the similar ecological roles of species in guilds or communities of different faunas are reflected in similar morphological responses. We feel that the concept of ecomorphological convergence has not been sufficiently submitted to critical scrutiny. In particular we believe that the available evidence should be reassessed.

MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE GEOSITTA MINERS (FURNARIIDAE) AND BIOGEOGRAPHIC IMPLICATIONS FOR AVIAN SPECIATION IN FUEGO-PATAGONIA

Abstract Pleistocene glacial cycles have often been hypothesized to provide vicariant mechanisms leading to allopatric speciation in a wide range of southern South American (Fuegian and Patagonian) avian taxa. Few of those biogeographic hypotheses, however, have been rigorously tested using phylogenetic analysis. We examined sequence variation in three mitochondrial gene fragments (cytochrome b, ND2, and ND3) to construct a molecular phylogeny for the South American genus Geositta (Furnariidae) and to test the interrelated hypotheses that Geositta cunicularia and G. antarctica are sister species that originated from a common ancestor while isolated in glacial refugia during Pleistocene glacial events in Fuego-Patagonia. Sequence data were obtained for all 10 currently recognized species of Geositta as well as Geobates poecilopterus and two outgroup taxa (Upucerthia ruficauda and Aphrastura spinicauda). We found levels of sequence divergence among Geositta species to be high, ranging from 7.4% to 16.3%. Our phylogenetic reconstructions clearly indicate relationships among Geositta species that differ considerably from those of traditional Geositta phylogeny. These data also strongly suggest that Geositta, as currently defined, is paraphyletic, with Geobates being embedded within Geositta. Our data do not support the hypothesized sister relationship between G. antarctica and G. cunicularia. Instead, they suggest that Geositta consists of two distinct clades, with antarctica and cunicularia falling into different clades. The high levels of sequence divergence among Geositta species, lack of a sister relationship between cunicularia and antarctica, and placement of Fuego-Patagonian antarctica into a clade consisting of two high-Andean (saxicolina and isabellina) and one coastal-west-slope (maritima) species demonstrate that the evolutionary history of Geositta is much older and far more complex than a simple model of allopatric speciation in glacial refugia would suggest. Filogenia Molecular del Género Geositta (Furnariidae) e Implicaciones Biogeográficas para la Especiación de la Aves en Tierra del Fuego y Patagonia

Fossil and Recent Avifaunas and the Interamerican Interchange

Ornithologists have long known that important interchanges took place in the Cenozoic between the North and South American avifaunas (von Ihering, 1927; Lonnberg, 1927). The debate about what taxa were involved and what direction they migrated has not often been resolved satisfactorily, however, because Recent birds give clues that can be interpreted in different ways by different people and because fossil birds have frequently been dismissed since they apparently offer such insignificant evidence.

DEAN OF AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGISTS: THE MULTIPLE LEGACIES OF FRANK M. CHAPMAN OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

F M C , the “acknowledged dean of American ornithologists” (Lanyon 1995), was a great systematist who paved the way for modern research on South American birds. He was also an intrepid explorer, a major contributor to the growth and development of museum education, and a respected conservationist. His lectures were popular, his books ushered in the era of fi eld ornithology and birding, and his enthusiasm for Barro Colorado Island helped make that 1,500-ha speck of land a world-renowned center for tropical research. Here, I describe some of those accomplishments and their legacies, fi rst reviewing Chapman’s career, then focusing on his qualities as an administrator (“The Chief”) and on the staff he gathered around him (“the golden years”), before turning to his philosophy of museum education, his dual personality as a collector and conservationist, his research in avian systematics and biogeography, and his role in popularizing Barro Colorado Island as a tropical research center. Finally, I discuss the Chapman Fund, perhaps his best-known legacy, which was created a er his death 60 years ago. C ’ C

IN MEMORIAM: JEAN DORST, 1924–2001

Jean Dorst, former director of the National Museum of Natural History (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle; MNHN) in Paris, a member of the French Académie des Sciences, one of the founders and second president of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galápagos, president of the 16th International Ornithological Congress (IOC), and vice president of the Commission of Protection of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), died on 8 August 2001 in Paris, a er a long illness. He had turned 77 the day before. Dorst’s extraordinarily diverse and productive career has been reported in ornithological journals, in popular magazines, and in the daily press in France and other countries. Dorst became a Corresponding Fellow of the AOU in 1960 and an Honorary Fellow in 1973. He was also an honorary member of the British Ornithologists’ Union. He was president of the Société Ornithologique de France in 1966–1967. During the 1960s to 1980s, he helped organize international ornithological congresses as a member of the IOC Permanent Executive Commi ee and as a member of its standing Commi ee on Ornithological Nomenclature. In 1974, he was president of the 14th IOC in Canberra, Australia. Jean Dorst was born near Mulhouse (Alsace, France) on 7 August 1924. As a boy, perhaps under the infl uence of his father, a textile industrialist who collected bu erfl ies as a hobby, Dorst started to collect animals and plants. A er studies in biology and paleontology at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Paris (Sorbonne), Dorst began his long-term career at the MNHN on 1 January 1947, when he was hired as “assistant” in the ”Laboratoire de Zoologie (Mammifères et Oiseaux).” He then became, successively, “sousdirecteur” (1949), and “professeur titulaire” and chairman of Mammifères et Oiseaux (1964; he was only 40). In that last position, Dorst followed a roster of only fi ve distinguished predecessors: Etienne, then Henri, Geoff roy-Saint-Hilaire; Henri, then Alphonse, Milne-Edwards; and Jacques Berlioz. Dorst was elected to the directorship of the MNHN in 1975 and re-elected in 1980. In 1985, he resigned from the directorship of the MNHN, before the end of his second term, to protest the French Government’s radical administrative changes in the structure of the venerable establishment, which he, like all of its personnel, aff ectionately called “la maison.” Those so-called “reforms,” imposed by the government against the wishes of the museum’s staff , meant “serious threats to the independence and originality” of the museum. Unfortunately, Dorst’s sad predictions have come to pass. Dorst obtained his Ph.D. in 1949, the same year he was promoted to “sous-directeur” at MNHN. His doctoral dissertation, prepared under Professors E. Bourdelle and J. Berlioz, dealt with the structural colors of hummingbird feathers. In the 1970s, he published several papers on structural colors in bird-of-paradise feathers, examined through scanning electron microscopy. An all-around naturalist, he traveled widely, and was an elected member of the exclusive Société des Explorateurs. In the mid-1980s, he and I co-authored a book chapter on convergences among taxa and avifaunas living at high altitudes in the tropical belt around the world. Although Dorst was very fond of Africa’s high mountains, his long-term stomping ground was the Andes of South America. From 1954 onward, he made several long trips to Peru, where he studied especially the high Andean puna. He published seminal papers on the ecology of the puna avifauna and on the breeding biology of several of its endemic species. His 1967 book, South America and Central America: A Natural History (originally published in English and translated into French in 1969), refl ects not only his personal experiences in the Neotropics, but also his broad erudition. In 1958, coincident with the centennial of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) sent Dorst to the Galápagos Islands on a The Auk 121(4):1289–1290, 2004