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Biologist flies with the birds.
An important part of Martin Wikelski's research in
ecology and evolutionary biology is bombing along back roads
of Illinois in an old truck in the middle of the night.
A typical trip starts in the evening near
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where
Wikelski and colleagues trap a bird -- a common migrating
songbird, the Swainson's thrush -- and attach a lightweight
radio transmitter to its back. Armed with a radio receiver
and a map of the graph-paper-like grid of roads that
blankets the Midwest, the group releases the bird and shoves
off.
"We always get stopped by the police,"
said Wikelski, an assistant professor in ecology and
evolutionary biology. "We don't drive like crazy, but
sometimes we have to drive a little
faster."
The trip ends at dawn, 400 to 600
miles north of their starting place, when the bird comes to
roost. Often it's in a backyard on a residential street. The
house is still dark, but the researchers are eager not to
lose track of a night's worth of research. Wikelski knocks
on the door.
"First they think we're crazy, because we
just overnighted and we look like madmen," he said. "But
when they find out what we're doing they invite us in for
coffee."
Perhaps by the second cup they'll hear a
story that connects their backyard with an ambitious and
far-reaching research effort. Piecing together insights from
fieldwork in the American Midwest, Panama and the Galapagos,
Wikelski hopes to discover fundamental principles about how
life is organized.
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Martin Wikelski compares tropical and
temperate zone birds in an effort to discern broad patterns
in the relationship between physiology and evolution. Here,
Wikelski, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary
biology, holds one of the birds kept in an aviary on the
roof of Guyot Hall. (photo: Ruth Stevens)
• Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
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