Ned K. Johnson Young Investigator Award, 2012

Abstract

The  Ned K. Johnson Young Investigator Award goes to Dr. James W. River. Jim received his Ph.D. in  from the University of California (UC) Santa Barbara and has a remarkable record of research and professional leadership for someone who is only four years past his doctorate degree. He received a master’s degree from Kansas State in  and was a Research Biologist with the Kansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit from  to , when he moved to UC Santa Barbara to begin his doctoral work. Jim has diverse and extensive experience and is familiar with a wide range of research approaches. These include bird banding, sound recording, nest finding, physiological work on fat metabolism, anatomical work on sperm storage by female birds, and ecological physiology and endocrinology. He has also worked in a diversity of habitats in North America, South America, and New Zealand, including wetland, grassland, coniferous forest, and montane cloud-forest ecosystems. Jim has showed a great deal of creativity and rigor in designing his Ph.D. research on cowbirds and their hosts. Jim had the insight to realize that by studying begging behavior in cowbirds, he could shed light on questions related to signal honesty because The Auk 130(1):204–205, 2013 © The American Ornithologists’ Union, 2013. Printed in USA.