Professor T R Birkhead - Page 2
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Current Research Projects
1. Postcopulatory sexual selection
- The evolution of sperm design. The aim is to establish how much of the remarkable variation in sperm design in birds can be attributed to phylogeny and to post-copulatory sexual selection. See Immler et al. (2007) PLoS1; J. Evol. Biol. Immler & Birkhead 274: 561-568; Calhim & Birkhead (2007) Behav. Ecol. 18: 271-275 and PLoS1.
- Sperm design and speciation. The aim of this project funded by the Leverhulme Trust is to understand the post-copulatory, prezygotic barriers between birds. The study exploits a specific but unusual situation – the inability of male (but not female) bullfinches Pyrrhula pyrrhula to hybridise with females of other finch species (including the canary). The bullfinch has an unusual, neotonous sperm design that may account for the inability to hybridise. Associated with this project we are also investigating the phylogeny of Pyrrhula; and the costs of sperm production. See Birkhead et al. (2006) Auk 123, 383-392; Acta Zoologica 88: 119-128.
2. Population biology of seabirds
Together with Ben Hatchwell, I have maintained a long-term study population of individually marked guillemots Uria aalge on Skomer Island, Wales since 1972. The aim of the study, funded by the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW), is to understand the processes responsible for long term changes in the population. We monitor adult and immature survival, age at first breeding, reproductive success among other things and are currently assessing the effects of oil pollution and climate change on guillemot numbers. See Votier et al. (2005) Ecology Letters, 8: 1157-1164.
3. History of Science.
My current project, funded by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust (2009-2012) is to document the development of modern ornithology, from 1920 to the present. My previous history of science project, also funded by the Leverhulme Trust was to explore the development of scientific ornithology since Aristotle. The result of that project was `The Wisdom of Birds´ (Bloomsbury, London 2008), and a number of papers (below). In addition, with various collaborators, I have written a history of behavioural ecology (Birkhead, T. R. & Monaghan, P. 2009. Ingenious ideas: the history of behavioral ecology. In: Evolutionary Behavioral Ecology (Ed. by Westneat, D. F. & C. Fox.)), and a history of sperm studies (Birkhead, T. R. & Montgomerie, R. 2008. Three centuries of sperm studies. In: Sperm Biology, An Evolutionary Perspective (Ed. by Birkhead, T. R., Hosken, D. & Pitnick, S.). London: Academic Press).
Birkhead, T. R., Schulze-Hagen, K. & Kinzelbach, R. 2004. Domestication of the canary Serinus canaria - the change from green to yellow. Archives of Natural History, 31, 50-56.
Birkhead, T. R., Butterworth, E. & van Balen, S. 2006. A recently discovered seventeenth century French encyclopadeia of ornithology. Archives of Natural History, 33, 109-134.
Birkhead, T. R. & van Balen, S. 2008. Bird-keeping and the development of ornithological science. Archives of Natural History, 35, 281-305.
Charmantier, I., Greengrass, M. & Birkhead, T. R. 2008. Jean-Baptiste Faultrier´s Traitté general des Oyseaux (1660): an evaluation. Archives of Natural History, 35, 319-338.
Charmantier, I. & Birkhead, T. R. 2008. Willughby's angel: the pintailed sandgrouse (Pterrocles alchata). Journal for Ornithology, 149, 469-472.
Montgomerie, R. & Birkhead, T. R. 2009. Samuel Pepys' hand-coloured copy of John Ray's 'The Ornithology of Francis Willughby (1678). Journal of Ornithology.
Schulze-Hagen, K., Stokke, B. & Birkhead, T. R. 2009. Reproductive biology of the European cuckoo Cuculus canorus: early insights, persistent errors and the acquisition of knowledge. Journal for Ornithology, 150, 1-16.
4. Zebra finch genome project
The zebra finch will be the first passerine bird to have its genome sequenced and assembled. Jon Slate, Terry Burke and I are contributing towards the zebra finch genome sequence project by building a linkage map, using a large panel of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) segregating in a 3-generation mapping pedigree. The map will be used to aid assembly of the genome, to investigate the evolution of avian karyotypes and to map quantitative trait loci (QTL) for ecologically relevant traits.
Times Higher Education
Since 2002 I have written a monthly column for the Times Higher Education (formerly Times Higher Education Supplement (THES)), all directed at encouraging good academic practice, maintaining academic standards and just occasionally pointing out academic and management peccadillos.
Some recent articles include:
May 2009 - And be quick about it
April 2009 - Can´t beat the real thing
March 2009 - Dr Who
February 2009 - We´ve bred a generation unable to think
February 2009 - No apples for the teachers
January 2009 - Secrets of real success
Information for prospective students or post-docs
I am always interested to hear from well qualified, highly motivated students. So if you are interested in working in my lab as a MSc, PhD or post-doc please send me an e-mail with your CV and the names and addresses of three referees. Note that if you are from outside the UK you must have your own funding. UK students are eligible for NERC studentships and a list of those available (to start September October) is usually posted on the University web pages eight to ten months previously.
Books by T R Birkhead
1. 'The Wisdom of Birds' (2008) - Click here for further information
Our relationship with birds goes back a long way. Humans have had to understand birds and to know something of their behaviour and ecology to hunt them successfully; knowing where and when birds might be at certain times of year; when they reproduce; how they reproduce; whether they nest on the ground or in trees; whether they lay a single egg or many. Inspired by the unexpected, people have also imbued birds with a spiritual or symbolic significance, as with the timely appearance of vast numbers of exhausted migrant quail that saved the Israelites from starvation.
The sheer abundance, visibility and diversity of birds means that they have been a source of practical or symbolic fascination ever since men began to paint and write. Images of birds decorate the walls of European caves; in Africa men chipped out the forms of birds on slabs of hot, red sandstone; and in Arctic burial chambers the skulls of great auks accompanied the dead to the next world. The Greeks were inspired and mystified by birds; they wrote poems about them; they employed their body-parts and droppings as medicines and magic, and used their presence or behaviour to fortell the future.
Today, we know more about the lives of birds than any other type of animal. But how do we know what we know?
There have been many strange ideas about birds. Some are still familiar, like the belief that certain geese emerged from barnacles attached to logs floating in the sea; or that the pelican sacrificed itself for its young by piercing its own breast and allowing them to feed on the blood; or of swallows over-wintering in the mud at the bottom of ponds. Others are less well known and include the extraordinary notion that a parrot anointed with the secretions from a Brazilian frog would change its plumage from green to red; or that the males of certain types of pigeon can trick females into abandoning their offspring and partner and fly away with them; or that birds can change sex.
Which of these is true; which is false? When did we start to care? How do we distinguish fantasy from fact? And who was responsible for this change in attitude towards our knowledge?
The switch from ornithological fantasy to verifiable fact began only in the seventeenth century, and the person responsible for this change, was John Ray.
A central figure in England´s scientific revolution, Ray was more than an ornithologist, he was a biologist in the broadest sense of the word; he knew plants, he knew insects, but above all, he knew how to think. He was a philosopher and it was his mode of thinking about the natural world that changed ornithology. Standing on the threshold of the medieval and the modern worlds, Ray scrutinised and rejected much that had gone before and looking to the future with extraordinary foresight, anticipated many of the issues that continue to fascinate ornithologists today. Clever and industrious, John Ray was also charming and modest as his portrait indicates, and you cannot help but like him.
Ray stood on the threshold of new knowledge. He was the first scientific ornithologist; the first to be concerned about what was true and what wasn´t. To sort fact from fantasy Ray had to reappraise much of what had gone before. Who for example, among his predecessors had first noticed the frantic autumnal hopping of caged nightingales? Who suggested this was a thwarted southward migration? Who later exploited this hysterical hopping to map the routes and genes underlying migratory behaviour?
My aim in /The Wisdom of Birds/ is to trace observations like these from their earliest beginnings, through to their incorporation into our present knowledge of birds.
2. 'Sperm Biology, an Evolutionary Approach' (2008) Elsevier, edited by Tim Birkhead, David Hosken and Scott Pitnick.
The evolution of spermatozoa is one of most rapidly developing topics in biology. The aim of this book is to synthesize our current knowledge of the evolution of sperm form and function and to suggest further avenues for research.
Chapters:
1. History of Sperm Studies in Evolutionary Biology Tim Birkhead & Robert Montgomerie
2. The evolutionary origin and maintenance of sperm: selection for a small, motile gamete mating type Kate Lessells, Rhonda Snook & David Hosken
3. Sperm Diversity Scott Pitnick, David Hosken and Tim Birkhead
4. Evolution of Spermatogenesis Helen White-Cooper, Karen Doggett & Ron Ellis
5. Sperm Motility and Energetics Jim Cummins
6. Sperm Competition and Sperm Phenotype Tom Pizzari & Geoff Parker
7. Sperm-Female Interactions Scott Pitnick, Mariana Wolfner & Susan Suarez
8. Sperm-Egg Interactions Rhonda Snook & Tim Karr
9. Sperm and Speciation Daniel Howard, Stephen Palumbi, Leanna Birge & Mollie Manier
10. Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics of Sperm Leigh Simmons & Allen Moore
11. Sperm Proteomics and Genomics Timothy Karr & Steven Dorus
12. Drive and Sperm Daven Presgraves
13. Unusual Gametic and Genetic Systems Benjamin Normark
14. Sperm and Conservation Eduardo Roldan and Montse Gomendio
15. Sperm, Human Fertility and Society Allan Pacey
The Red Canary (2002). Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London
The story of the first genetically engineered animal. Long before Dolly the Sheep or transgenic mice or bioengineered corn, there was the Red Canary-the first organism to be manipulated by genetic technology, back in the 1920s. The effort to produce a red canary invoked all of the deep issues that troubled genetic engineering decades later: the nature of genes and how they work, the specter of eugenics, and the relative roles of nature and nurture in determining what an organism is. I describe how a rather plain but sweet-voiced green bird discovered by Spanish explorers in the 1300s became a craze in Renaissance Europe, how breeders gradually turned its green plumage to yellow, and how a pair of German bird enthusiasts combined genetic science with bird-breeding lore in the 1920s to produce an almost-red canary. But it wasn't until the 1960s that British fanciers were able to successfully breed a red canary, but not by genes alone. The Red Canary is the compelling tale of an important episode in the history of genetics, of the fascinating hidden world of bird-breeding, of contentious ideas in 1920s Germany, and of two amateur scientists who unwittingly managed to be decades ahead of their time.
Praise for The Red Canary
"Propelled by his considerable scientific authority, Tim Birkhead has woven an astonishing, sometimes shocking story of men who brought all the desperate desire of the human enterprise to bear in trying to create a genetically perfected bird at a time when others were obsessed with the idea of the genetically perfect man. The result is an enlightening-and cautionary-tale of scientific insights and blind ambitions." - Carl Safina, author of Eye of the Albatross
"Rich in historical detail, studded with curious characters-some of them human-and brimming with scientific insights, The Red Canary reads like a fine novel." - Matt Ridley, author of Nature via Nurture and Genome
Promiscuity (2000). Faber, London.
PROMISCUITY (2000) is about reproduction and explores the ways in which the two components of Darwin's concept of sexual selection - competition between males and choice by females - operate after insemination has taken place. Post-copulatory sexual selection, as it is called, consists of competition between males to fertilise females' eggs (sperm competition) and choice of different males' sperm by females (cryptic female choice). These are, by definition, processes which can occur only if females are inseminated by more than one male during a single reproductive cycle. Generations of reproductive biologists assumed females to be sexually monogamous but it is now apparent that this is wrong. The recent recognition that females often copulate with several different males, together with the realisation that in an evolutionary sense all organisms are basically selfish, has revolutionised our view of reproduction.
"A marvellous and lucid survey, from bedbugs to humans. If you want to know why sex is so complicated, read this book and give your brain a treat" Nick Davies - Cambridge
"An engaging, popular account of the ultimate battle between the sexes. The excellent book will leave you in no doubt that Kipling was right when he declared that the female of the species is more deadly than the male" Roger Short - Monash, Australia
Other Books
1998. Sperm Competition and Sexual Selection. Academic Press, London (Edited with A. P. Møller).
1993. Great Auk Islands. Poyser, London.
1992. Sperm Competition in Birds. Academic Press, London. (With A. P. Møller).
1991. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ornithology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (Edited with M. De I. Brooke). Winner of the McColvin Medal for best reference book of 1991.
1991. The Magpies. Poyser, London.
1989. The Survival Factor. Boxtree, London. (With M.E. Birkhead).
1985. The Atlantic Alcidae. Academic Press, London. (Edited with D. N. Nettleship).
1983. Avian Ecology. Blackie, Tertiary Level Biology Series, Glasgow & London. (With C. M. Perrins).
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