This meeting and presentation took place solely in person at the Liederkranz Club at 6 East 87th Street, New York.
The evening began with a reception at 6 pm. This was a members-only event, and it was well-attended with approximately one hundred people including Society members, award winners, and invited guests.
At 7:30 pm, Board Member and Acting President Peter Davenport called the Society’s meeting to order.
Acting President Davenport welcomed all to this 148th annual meeting of the Linnaean Society of New York, thanked everyone for coming, and made the following remarks:
In Memoriam
- He gave tribute to the Society members who have passed away in the past year:
- Isabel Conte, member since 2008
- Sally Garrett, member since 2003
- Robert F. Haupt, member since 2004
State of the Society
- He observed that the state of the Society is strong and active, and drew attention to the 2025 annual report that had been distributed to all attendees as they arrived this evening. It included reports from Secretary Meredith Barchat, Treasurer Debbie Mullins and chairs of the following committees: archives, conservation, field trips, editorial, Great Gull Island, events and membership, programs, and website and technology.
- He noted that the Society’s membership is growing—more than one hundred new members have joined this past year.
- He observed that part of the Society’s strength is due to the work and vision of the board of directors, and he highlighted many of their contributions. He also noted some non-board members who have contributed to the workings of the Society, including Michelle Choy for her technical and logistical work for running the now-hybrid members meetings; past Board Member Eric Ozawa and past President Ken Chaya for their work as co-chairs of the conservation committee; and Dom Ricci, Junko Suzuki, and Suzanne Zywicki, the nomination committee members, for their dedicated and successful work recruiting members for the 2026/2027 board of directors. And finally, Peter recognized and thanked the two outgoing board members, Chuck McAlexander and Erika Piik, for their contributions and praised their work.
Voting: Election of Officers and a Motion to Amend the Bylaws
- Peter announced the names of the nominees for the board of directors, noted that their biographies were presented in the program handout, and asked each nominee to introduce himself/herself by standing up, and the audience applauded for each in turn.
- Voting will be done online via an email to all members. Polling will commence this evening following the meeting and will be open for 72 hours; it will end on March 12, 2026.
Linnaean Society of New York Awards
- Peregrine Falcon 50-year Member Award (members who joined in 1976):
- Thomas W. Burke
- John Flack
- Fritz Mueller
- Shiela G. Rosenburg
- Richard ZainEldeen
- 2026 Natural History Service Award: This award is given to individuals who, through working with members of the public, have triggered a lasting interest in natural history. It is bestowed on Dr. Shannon Curley and Dr. Jose Ramirez-Garofalo for their work furthering research, development, and interest in Freshkills Park, a unique and special grasslands environment in Staten Island, New York City.
- Dr. Shannon Curley
- Dr. Jose Ramirez-Garofalo
- 2026 Shelda Taylor Award: This award honors K–12 teachers who have made a sustained and substantial impact by educating their students on aspects of natural history. This year’s award is given to Matthew Malina, a past NYC school teacher who is the founder and executive director of NYC H2O, a nonprofit organization whose mission includes inspiring and educating NYC students about their city’s local water ecology and how to protect it.
- Matthew Malina
- 2026 Eisenmann Medal: The Eisenmann Medal is the highest award given by the Linnaean Society of New York. It is given to an individual for excellence in ornithology and encouragement of the amateur. This year the Society honors Dr. Trevor D. Price, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago, for his research work on the origin of species, the underlying reasons for why each species has a restricted geographical range, and how ranges are being altered as a consequence of anthropogenic change.
- Dr. Trevor D. Price
At 7:56 pm, Acting President Peter Davenport turned to the lecture program and welcomed this year’s Eisenmann Medalist, Dr. Trevor D. Price, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago.
Lecture: “A Bird’s Life in the Anthropocene,” presented by Dr. Trevor D. Price
Dr. Price began studying birds in India in the 1970s, and over these past 50 years human impact has had an accelerating effect on the habitat and environment there. Showing a map of the world that was color-coded for the magnitudes of the human footprint, he noted, “What really stands out is the Himalaya.” With the loss of habitat, many bird populations have been precipitously dropping, among them grassland birds such as the Great Indian Bustard—one of the rarest of the world’s birds with a remaining population of only about 150 individuals. He showed photos of banded Great Indian Bustard chicks and of two species of vulture chicks, another a group of birds experiencing serious population decline. He explained that the Indian government is making a concerted effort to keep these populations going and is working to improve protection of India’s national parks.
How are bird species adapting to environmental changes due to human pressures in the Anthropocene? Dr. Price has been studying one of India’s common, not endangered birds—the Hume’s Warbler—with a population estimated to be between 20 to 30 million. It lives in trees, spending its breeding season in the Himalaya and the winter in the plains of India. Dr. Price focused his talk on two aspects of human activity that are impacting the lives of the Hume’s Warbler in India: 1) climate change, and 2) anthropogenic noise.
Climate change has played a role in changing the breeding patterns of the Hume’s Warbler, Dr. Price’s research has found, based on decades of observations in the West Himalaya near Manali, Himachal Pradesh. Dr. Price described how the males arrive first, while snow still covers the ground, and the birch trees have yet to have leaves (the birches grow at an elevation of 3,000 meters and host the insects that the Hume’s Warblers eat). Once the snow has melted, the birds build their nests on the ground and begin breeding. Over the past 50 years, the region’s mean winter temperature has risen approximately two degrees Celius, and the region has been getting less snow. As a consequence, the snow melts faster, and Hume Warblers are breeding about eight days earlier. But winter storms still occur at the same time as in the past, resulting in a mismatch of weather to the timing of breeding, and Dr. Price showed some examples of what can happen to impact breeding in those situations. Additionally, he explained that climate change is causing greater variation in the intensity of storms, and that strong ones often wash out the nests, killing the chicks. If those chicks are born late in the breeding season, close to the start of the monsoon, there isn’t enough time for another nest, thus resulting in no offspring for that breeding pair for the year. (Hume’s Warblers produce only one brood per year). Despite these changing environmental conditions at the breeding grounds, they seem to be having only “very minor effects on reproduction” and no consequential impact on the population of the Hume’s Warbler. Dr. Price explained, “And the reason we know that is because we also study these birds in the winter in South India.”
Dr. Price’s research work indicates that habitat loss during the nonbreeding season is the limiting factor in the Hume’s Warbler’s population sustainability. During this seven-month period, individual birds will protect a territory of between 20 to 30 trees from others of its species and feed on insects in these trees. The number of insects has been correlated to the number of birds that will return in the next nonbreeding season. Even though Hume’s Warblers are resourceful and have moved into urban areas as more habitat has been lost with human development, there are fewer trees and insects overall, and fewer birds can survive. Dr. Price summarized, “So it doesn’t matter what happens in the breeding season, the winter is absolutely critical for these birds to persist.”
Human-generated noise has profoundly changed soundscapes in many of the places where Hume’s Warblers live, especially in urban environments. Dr. Price and colleagues have been evaluating the effects of loud, ambient, man-made noise on the territorial calls of the Hume’s Warbler. Dr. Price played a few recordings of territorial calls for the audience, showed their spectrograms, and showed a seven-by-eleven grid of spectrograms recorded between the years 1982 through 2022. His group has concluded that the Hume’s Warbler has been making subtle changes to the structure and frequencies of its calls in order to be heard and recognized over urban noise. The calls have changed six times in 40 years, and it takes only two or three birds to copy the innovator’s new call for that new call to spread across the species within 30 years. Dr. Price emphasized, “But it has to be learned.” The urban noise may have triggered the adaptation and, because it was a more effective call, it was learned, and its usage spread.
Following is Dr. Price’s abstract of his talk:
Most of us want to preserve wildlife because we love being amongst it. However, in promoting conservation we need to convey the value of species to the wider population, and it is unclear how good a job we do at this, certainly less successfully than explaining threats from climate change. In this talk I hope to generate discussion on why the preservation of biodiversity is so important to humanity, and how that can be conveyed. I will illustrate problems and prospects by drawing on examples from the amazing birds of India (the eastern Himalaya are thought to be the 2nd most biodiverse place in the world), where I have conducted research over the past 50 years.
At 8:28 pm, the Q&A session began.
At the conclusion of the Q&A, Vice President for Programs Karen Becker thanked Dr. Price for a fascinating talk about the ways that birds are adapting to environmental changes in the Himalaya. Professor Price responded to Karen’s remarks with parting words, “I’m just going to say one more thing: Let’s all be optimistic. There’s absolutely no point in being pessimistic.”
Vice President for Administration Amanda Bielskas concluded the annual meeting with the raffle drawing and announced the winners of the silent auction.
At 8:48 pm the meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted by Lisa Kroop, recording secretary