John W. Fitzpatrick

John Weaver Fitzpatrick (17 September 1951 in Saint Paul, Minnesota^[1]) is an American ornithologist primarily known for his research work on the South American avifauna and for the conservation of the Florida Scrub Jay.

Career

In 1974, Fitzpatrick graduated to BA in biology at the Harvard University with magna cum laude. In 1978, he promoted to Ph.D. at the Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. From 1978 to 1989 he was curator of birds at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. From 1988 to 1995 he worked as executive director of the Archbold Biological Station, a private ecological research foundation in central Florida. Since 1995 he is director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University. From 1995 to 2005 he was director of The Nature Conservancy. In 1979 he became elective member, in 1985 elected fellow and from 2000 to 2002 he served as president of the American Ornithologists' Union. In 2005, Fitzpatrick and a team of ornithologists from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (including Tim Gallagher) published a notable article in the magazine Science where they announced the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Fitzpatrick was further a member of the Hawaiian Crow Recovery Team which was appointed in 1992. He is also an expert of the Neotropical avifauna. He travelled many times to remote areas of South America, in particular to the western Amazonian basin and to the Andean foothills whereat he published his field guide Neotropical Birds: Ecology and Conservation in 1996. Fitzpatrick was co-author of at least six bird species new to science, including the Bar-winged Wood Wren (Henicorhina leucoptera), the Cinnamon Screech Owl (Otus petersoni), the Royal Sunangel (Heliangelus regalis), the Manu Antbird (Cercomacra manu), the Cinnamon-breasted Tody-Tyrant (Hemitriccus cinnamomeipectus), and the Cinnamon-faced Tyrannulet (Phylloscartes parkeri).

In 1983 he became the youngest AOU member who received the Brewster Medal of the American Ornithologists' Union for his longterm study on demography, social behavior, and conservation of the endangered Florida Scrub Jay where he teamed up with Glen Everett Woolfenden (1930–2007) since 1972. In 2005, he got the Eisenmann Medal from the Linnaean Society of New York. In 2011, he was honored with the Marion A. Jenkinson AOU Service Award, an award given in the memory of Marion Anne Jenkinson (1937–1994), the former treasurer of the American Ornithologists' Union. For Fitzpatrick's achievement in the study of Peruan birds the newly described Sira Barbet (Capito fitzpatricki) from Peru was named in his honour in 2012.

Works (selected)

• Citizen science: Public Participation in Environmental Research, 2012
• The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World, 2007
• Neotropical Birds, 1996 (with Douglas F. Stotz, Theodore A Parker and Debra K Moskovits)
• The Florida Scrub Jay - Demography of a Cooperative-Breeding Bird, 1985 (with Glen Everett Woolfenden)

References