Two Expeditions Highlight the Work of Women Ornithologists in Colombia and Brazil

From the Autumn 2023 concern of Dwelling Chook journal. Subscribe now.

A couple of hours earlier than the primary solar ­rays of the day pierced the jungle cover within the japanese foothills of the Central Andes mountains, 5 Colombian girls wielded headlamps and machetes in an ornithological quest for Sooty Ant-Tanagers, White-bibbed Manakins, Magdalena Antbirds, and different forest birds. Guided by hen songs, the expeditionaries launched into a every day routine of trudging throughout muddy slopes and rocky terrain, fortified by the information that they have been treading the identical path as Elizabeth Kerr—an unsung legend of ornithology who had collected a whole lot of specimens for the famed American Museum of Pure Historical past hen surveys in Colombia greater than a century in the past.

Kerr’s identify got here as a “revelation” to Juliana Soto-Patiño, one of many Colombian ornithologists on that 2020 expedition, as she was making ready to affix a bigger venture to resurvey Colombian birds documented by AMNH ornitholo­gists within the early 1900s.

“It was a shock for us to listen to a couple of lady in Colombia, at the moment, doing fieldwork and collections,” mentioned Soto-Patiño, who’s now a PhD scholar on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The invention of Kerr turned the inspiration for a special type of expedition that went past a contemporary resur­vey of Colombian birdlife—one with the added aim to elevate up the voices of Colombian girls in ornithology. The expedition launched in December 2020, comprising eight girls ornithol­ogists from 4 Colombian analysis establishments. In 5 days, the workforce documented almost 90 hen species within the Central Andes foothills the place they labored—together with 26 species that have been a match with Elizabeth Kerr’s collections in 1907. Soto-Patiño and her all-women workforce of fellow scientists summarized their fieldwork findings, and highlighted Kerr’s influence, in an article revealed within the journal Ornithological Purposes in Could 2023.

They usually weren’t alone of their mis­sion; in 2019, one other all-women workforce had executed a grueling ornithological expedition within the Amazon area of Bra­zil to pay homage to yet one more unher­alded lady—Emilie Snethlage—who had additionally made pioneering contributions to the scientific information of South American birdlife over 100 years in the past.

Each expeditions used subject orni­thology within the Twenty first century to shine a highlight on the contributions of ladies ornithologists. Because the Colombian authors wrote of their Ornithological Purposes article, they launched their expedition to “recog­nize, spotlight, and elevate the voices and legacies of ladies which have been systemically stored invisible.”

“By Ourselves, Utilizing Our Personal Voices and Minds”

Initially, Soto-Patiño and her colleagues signed up for an expedition beneath the Colombia Resurvey Venture, an effort by Colombian universities and analysis establishments to match Twenty first-century hen species distributions in 5 areas to information from the AMNH surveys within the early Twentieth century, as a approach of searching for potential vary shifts or extinctions as a consequence of habitat loss and local weather change. Whereas leafing by way of the writings of Frank Chapman, the AMNH curator of birds within the early 1900s who organized the previous museum surveys, Soto-Patiño found a reference to the “Mrs. Kerr Assortment”—one of many specimen collections that helped Chapman higher perceive hen distribution patterns in Colombia. Chapman went on to be considered one of many founding figures of recent ornithology, credited with beginning the Christmas Chook Rely, whereas “Mrs. Kerr” was relegated to foot­notes in Chapman’s revealed work, despite the fact that she made exceptional contributions to his analysis. (Some encyclopedias even assumed there was a typo, referring to a “Mr. Kerr” as a substitute of Mrs. Kerr.)

As fellow expeditionary Nelsy Niño-Rodríguez of the Humboldt Insti­tute in Colombia put it, they now envi­sioned an all-women, all-Colombian leg of the resurvey venture—conducting fieldwork and analysis “by ourselves, utilizing our personal voices and minds.”

“Once we discovered Kerr, it bonded us so much,” mentioned Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela, a member of the all-women Colombian expedition who’s now an assistant professor on the College of California, Santa Cruz. “As a result of we didn’t have a [woman] position mannequin for therefore lengthy.”

Not a lot is understood in regards to the biog­raphy of Elizabeth Kerr. In accordance with Niño-Rodríguez, there is just one web page about Kerr’s life “written by her personal hand,” a self-authored article revealed in Collier’s journal in 1912. In that piece, Kerr referred to her work “within the jungles of South America, accumulating uncommon tropical birds for museums and personal collectors.”

“Typically I see no human being for 3 weeks at a time,” Kerr wrote. “But I’m not afraid. And I like the jungle.”

Although Kerr wasn’t formally employed on the American Museum of Pure Historical past, she contributed to Chapman’s work as a contract hen collector. Of their Ornithological Appli­cations article, Soto-Patiño and her col­leagues wrote that whereas different girls within the early Twentieth century “wore fancy hats adorned with tropical hen feathers” and picked up stuffed birds, Kerr typically labored in stifling rainforests alone in a garb of “bloomers, a protracted capturing jacket, and a rubber hat to guard her from the tropical rains.”

And in accordance with the historic file of letter exchanges between Chapman and Kerr, she additionally labored beneath aggravating expectations by her employer. Their correspondence “was ridden with calls for from Chapman for higher collections from Kerr,” Soto-Patiño and her colleagues wrote in Ornithological Purposes, “typically anticipating her solo work to satisfy the identical requirements as that of skilled collectors and even workforce expeditions performed by the AMNH.”

“A lot of the Chapman–Kerr letters talk about the distinction in specimen costs and the fixed battle between Kerr requesting extra funds for her expedition and Chapman demanding higher outcomes to wire extra money.”

Over her in depth travels to Colom­bia (first between 1906 and 1907, after which from 1909 to 1912), Kerr is credited with submitting 400 specimens of about 200 hen species to the American Museum of Pure Historical past, together with the one specimen of the Sooty Ant-Tan­ager within the museum at the moment.

“Kerr’s explorations … stay one of many few investigations of the avifauna of this distant, inaccessible, and incred­ibly various territory,” Soto-Patiño and her colleagues wrote in Ornithological Purposes. “Her specimens embrace a myriad of species which are tough to look at … even the elusive and enig­matic Rufous-vented Floor-Cuckoo, which has only a few observations in Colombia.”

Retracing Elizabeth Kerr’s Footsteps

Primarily based on the tough descriptions of Kerr’s first accumulating interval, Soto-Patiño and her colleagues selected to retrace Kerr’s footsteps within the jungles close to the city of Fresno within the Tolima division of Colombia. Even earlier than they set foot within the forest, the expeditionaries encountered biases in opposition to girls employees within the Twenty first century. Whereas scouting earlier than the journey, Ocampo-Peñuela mentioned she encountered remarks like, “Do you even know how one can use a machete?” Many locals have been curious and receptive to their mission, she mentioned, however some proclaimed the forest to be too harmful for younger girls.

But as soon as within the foothills of the Cen­tral Andes, the workforce rose every day at 4 a.m. from the identical hacienda (ranch) that Chapman and his colleagues had inhabited greater than a century in the past. Every day, they might don headlamps and haul their heavy gear to a cable automobile—an aerial elevate that linked the ranch to the forest. Whereas some workforce members meticulously arrange and checked mist nets to seize birds, others labored at a makeshift subject lab to course of the collected birds. Exhausted however resolute, they might return to the hacienda round 11 p.m.

Because the all-women expedition was cov­ered by information shops in Colombia, pictures and video emerged of the ladies, together with a pregnant Ocampo-Peñuela, work­ing in attempting subject circumstances. The photographs on TV crushed the misunderstanding that girls aren’t suited to grueling ornitho­logical fieldwork, mentioned expedition workforce member Jessica Díaz-Cárdenas of the Humboldt Institute.

“You primarily see photos of males… going into tremendous dense forest,” Díaz-Cárdenas mentioned about typical media depictions of scientific fieldwork in Colombia. “[But] it’s not as a result of girls usually are not doing the work.”

Figuring out Limitations Alongside Brazil’s Juruá River

A 12 months earlier in Brazil, one other all-women expedition had additionally retraced the steps of a pioneering lady in ornithology—Twentieth-century German naturalist Emilie Snethlage.

Within the late 1800s, Snethlage studied pure historical past on the College of Ber­lin, the place on the time college guidelines mandated that feminine college students arrive 5 minutes earlier than the beginning of lessons, sit behind a folding display screen, and keep there till quarter-hour after the tip of sophistication. Her persistence took her to check and gather birds alongside Amazonian trib­utaries in Brazil in 1905, a pursuit she continued till her dying in 1929.

Snethlage was an inspiration to Glaucia Del-Rio, a Brazilian ornithol­ogist and postdoctoral fellow on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who had had her personal profession experiences of being excluded from fieldwork alternatives deemed too harmful for ladies. So in 2016 she began organizing a subject expedition to check birds within the Juruá River area—the one main tributary within the Amazon River basin that was unex­plored by Snethlage—as a method to com­plete Snethlage’s legacy and spotlight her contributions to Brazilian ornithol­ogy. The expedition got here to fruition in 2019, only a few months earlier than the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and resulted within the first complete stock of hen species from the Juruá area, with 429 species recorded. Del-Rio and colleagues wrote about their findings in an article published in the Journal of Ornithology—the identical Ger­man journal that Snethlage had used to publish her findings over a century in the past.

Notably, Del-Rio and her colleagues reported the primary proof that the center Juruá River acts as a barrier for no less than 4 species of antbirds. Ant­birds inhabit the shadowy understory of forests they usually’re not inclined to fly throughout the forest breaks reduce by huge rivers. Del-Rio and her workforce discovered proof that, over a long time, the antbirds on both facet of the river develop minor genetic variations, which is why they’re thought of subspecies.

Maybe appropriately, the workforce found the differentiation amongst Black-faced Antbirds by specializing in the females of the species. Whereas the males have been primarily equivalent on either side of the river, the females had stark dif­ferences in coloration on their throats and underparts.

Marky Mutchler, a PhD scholar on the College of Chicago who joined Del-Rio on the Juruá River expedition, mentioned the invention was a reminder of the significance of learning feminine birds.

“Lots of people don’t take a look at feminine birds,” Mutchler mentioned, noting that the historic give attention to male birds is a reflec­tion of male domination within the subject of ornithology. “They’re extra so targeted on the flashy brilliant males.”

The Colombian expedition hon­oring Kerr additionally yielded vital findings about antbirds: concerningly, that they’re disappearing. The workforce witnessed swaths of what the AMNH ornithologists 100 years in the past had known as an “ocean of forest” wholly cleared away. The deforestation is prob­ably why the Twenty first-century, all-women Colombian expedition not encountered lots of the antbirds that Kerr had collected within the Central Andes.

Whereas the 2 expeditions set mile­stones within the illustration of ladies in subject ornithology, the expeditionaries on each analysis groups agree there nonetheless are loads of biases in opposition to girls in science that persist within the Twenty first century. In 2020—the identical 12 months that the all-women, all-Colombian expedition launched—an article revealed within the journal Nature Communications instructed that feminine protégés reap extra advantages when mentored by males. In a response pub­lished in 2021 within the journal Zoologia, Del-Rio and coauthors wrote that “if (and it’s a huge if)” such a suggestion is true, it’s not owing to “some inherent feminine drawback,” however to the “current gender-biased system” that privileges male professionals on the expense of the systemic, institutional inclusion of ladies scientists.

Ocampo-Peñuela hopes that the pictures from the Colombian expedition assist to foster such inclusion, by inspir­ing a “country-wide motion” that opens up pathways for conversations on girls as mentors, position fashions, and better-recognized pioneers in academia.

“Being surrounded by actually powerful girls, I may see the way forward for Colom­bian ornithology earlier than my eyes,” Ocampo-Peñuela mentioned about her experi­ence with the all-women expedition. “I would like ladies these photos to see themselves as expeditionaries, to know they’ve a job mannequin, and to know that as a lady you are able to do something you set your self as much as.”