Previous articleNext article Free2007 American Society of Naturalists Awards E. O. Wilson AwardTrevor PriceDouglas W. SchemskeDouglas W. SchemskeMichigan State University Search for more articles by this author Michigan State UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreDr. Trevor Price, of the University of Chicago, is this year’s recipient of the E. O. Wilson Naturalist Award. Trevor is one of leading figures in the field of evolutionary ecology and has used his deep understanding of birds to investigate questions on such topics as adaptation, sexual selection, speciation, biogeography, and animal behavior.His approach is to compile fundamental natural history information, followed by conceptually driven studies to identify ecological drivers of adaptation and speciation. As evidence of his commitment to pure natural history, Trevor has published nine papers in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (JBNHS), and these form the basis of many more high‐profile contributions, such as 13 papers in Evolution, seven in The American Naturalist, and six in Science or Nature. I suspect that Trevor would argue that the papers in JBNHS are just as significant as these contributions. Indeed, it is his attention to the details of the natural history that allows him such success in bringing natural history to a wider audience.For much of his career, Trevor has carried out ecological and evolutionary observations of Indian birds, with particular emphasis on leaf warblers in the genus Phylloscopus. His studies of Phylloscopus have established this fascinating and diverse group as an exemplar of geographic patterns of speciation and adaptive radiation. In a 2001 paper published in Science with D. Irwin and S. Bensch, Trevor investigates an early hypothesis for speciation this group. The following quote from this paper captures the critical importance of natural history in his work: “In 1938 Ticehurst identified five subspecies encircling the treeless Tibetan Plateau that intergrade with each other, except in central Siberia to the north of the plateau. … On the basis of morphology and plumage patterns, both Ticehurst and Mayr felt that the greenish warbler was a ring species, with evolution of reproductive isolation between the terminal forms resulting from spread around the Tibetan plateau.” The paper reports molecular and behavioral data consistent with speciation in a ring. The quoted passage also notes Mayr’s early observations on this system, and I suggest that it is accurate and appropriate to consider Trevor Price as the Ernst Mayr of our generation. For example, “Bird Species along the Himalayas: A Comparison of Himachal Pradesh with Kashmir,” published in JBNHS in 2003, provides just the sort of observations on species ranges that Mayr reported a half‐century ago: “We compared the breeding birds of two sanctuaries across the region of steep decline in species numbers, Manali in Himachal Pradesh, whose birds are described for the first time in this paper and Overa in Kashmir.”In another outstanding study of adaptation and speciation, Trevor and colleagues published a paper in The American Naturalist (“The Imprint of History on Communities of North American and Asian Warblers”) in which they compared the adaptive radiation of Dendroica warblers in North America to that of Phylloscopus warblers in India. They found that history and biogeography played a major role in diversification and resulted in less convergence in ecology and morphology than might have been expected based on the generally similar habits of these two groups. Few researchers have the natural history training to tackle such a comprehensive, comparative study.While Trevor relishes the wilderness of India, his natural history talents have provided valuable insights on evolution and behavior even in urban settings. He and colleague P. Yeh discovered a population of dark‐eyed juncos, normally found in montane environments, that has established a self‐sustaining population on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. The birds were able to persist though behavioral modifications that resulted in an extended breeding season and high offspring production with no evidence of density‐dependent recruitment. He proposed that the results provide quantitative support for the hypothesis of Baldwin (1896) that plasticity can be crucial during the early stages of colonization. Here again, Trevor recognized the insights of early natural historians and, with his exceptional powers of observation, brought us an elegant example of the mechanisms of adaptation in nature.He recently published a book titled Speciation in Birds, which is a tour de force in its union of evolution and natural history. To quote a recent review by Robert Payne at the University of Michigan, “This is an insightful and original work … the best work available on its topic, the behavioral and genetic causes and consequences of speciation in birds.”These are but a few examples of the many contributions that Trevor has made to our field. He is an unusually talented natural historian and is unique in his ability to bring fundamental observations to bear on major conceptual questions in ecology, evolution, and behavior. He is in the mold of many of our greatest biologists and is a fitting recipient of the E. O. Wilson Naturalist Award. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The American Naturalist Volume 171, Number 1January 2008 Published for The American Society of Naturalists Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/528138 © 2008 by The University of Chicago.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.