At 7:00 p.m., Vice President Douglas Futuyma called the Society meeting to order.
Vice President Futuyma reminded all LSNY members to renew their annual membership online or by mailing a check.
Motion 1: Vice President Futuyma announced the result of the online vote to approve the December 2023 members’meeting minutes. The vote passed with 153 votes in favor, none opposed, and one abstaining.
Motion 2: The Society voted on the following six applicants for membership, with 154 members voting in favor and none opposed.
- Susan Hallinan, Active Membership, Sponsored by Shannon Kelly
- Kate Byrne, Active Membership, Sponsored by Phil Ribolow
- Douglas McPherson, Active Membership, Sponsored by Amanda Bielskas
- Caz Taylor, Associate Membership, Sponsored by Kristin Ellington
- Amy Cook, Active Membership, Sponsored by Tom Stephenson
- Brian Foy, Lifetime Membership, Sponsored by Tom Stephenson
At 7:05 p.m., Vice President Futuyma introduced the speaker, Dr. Joan E. Strassmann.
Dr. Joan E. Strassmann
Joan Strassmann is Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, where her research focuses on social interactions and mutualisms of amoebas and bacteria. She received her Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied social cooperation and conflict among paper wasp families. She haspublished over 250 articles on social interactions in wasps, stingless bees, social amoebas, and bacteria. This work hasbeen recognized by a number of awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
More recently, she turned her attention to stories about birds and the scientists studying them. She recently published Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard, and is working on The Social Lives ofBirds, to be published by Little, Brown Spark.
Slow Birding: How Do the Birds You Glimpse Live Their Lives?
Inspired by the Italian slow food movement, slow birding takes a different approach from our typical frenzied search for birds in the midst of migration, when we move quickly from one avian jewel to another, racking up the highest species count possible.
The slow birding philosophy encourages the study of each individual species’ qualities, instead of focusing on thenumber of birds on a list. It involves a kind of meditation that was developed during COVID-19 to enable self-discovery and personal observation.
Dr. Strassmann’s methodology was initially developed while teaching a lab course at Rice University. It used three guiding questions as the core of the curriculum:
- How do birds use time and space?
- What are the differences between species and sexes?
- What else would you personally like to observe and understand?
The class was popular enough that, with the help of her students, Dr. Strassmann started a blog, that eventually becamethe book Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard.
In this engaging manifesto, Joan Strassmann “gets under the feathers” to tell heartwarming and intriguing stories, celebrating sixteen of our commonest birds. For example:
- Blue Jays are often unpopular, but Dr. Strassmann appreciates their intelligence and creativity, noting that they are credited with bringing oak forests northward after glaciation.
- Robins have polyamorous lives, but the male robin is willing to care for all the chicks in the nest, no matter the biological father. That said, she notes that the father gives preferential treatment to the birds that hatch from the bluest eggs, signaling the highest levels of health.
- The Snow Goose is known for its faithful pairings, mating for life, and consistently returning to the female’s nesting ground for reproduction.
- The White-throated Sparrow has four distinct sexes.
The illustrations in the book were rendered by Anthony Bartley, a former biology student in Dr. Strassmann’s lab. Already impressed with his fine art, she asked him to create art for her book when he expressed an interest in pursuing medical illustration.
Dr. Strassmann advocated using modern technology, such as eBird and Merlin Bird ID, to learn more about the birds we see in our immediate environment. She noted that adding one’s own data and field recordings to these applications is anessential and enjoyable way to contribute to science.
Ending the evening on an inspirational note, Dr. Strassmann mentioned some of the positive trends in conservation that are happening thanks to the efforts of passionate individuals:
- California is working to open four dams, creating renewed habitat for salmon.
- Electric vehicles are rapidly entering the market, lessening the damage from extraction and use of fossil fuels.
- In Asia, tigers, leopards, and elephants are reversing a historical decline by learning to live with humans.
- Piping Plovers are being seen on Montrose Beach in Chicago for the first time in seventy years.
At the close of the evening, after a fascinating Q&A session hosted by Vice President Douglas Futuyma, the Linnaean Society expressed appreciation to Dr. Strassmann for sharing her engaging book and her passion for birds.