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I study a number of topics in evolutionary biology, all focusing on the diversification, distribution and conservation of mammals. The breadth of my research is testimony to the fact that no interesting biological questions are ever fully answered, and progress towards answering them invariably open up a variety of others. True, curiosity, retrospection, and a fair bit of wanderlust have transformed my program into a sprawling accumulation of projects, but on the upside, I am never bored and seldom sedentary--I was on five continents in four months of 2010!
Since arriving at The Field Museum, my studies have focused on the systematics and biogeography of Neotropical mammals. Recent work has been organized around the Andes, including work in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, but earlier studies included Brazil's Atlantic Forest and Chile's Valdivian Forest. In the course of documenting some of the world's richest vertebrate faunas, we regularly discover and describe new taxa of marsupials, rodents and bats and incorporate them into regional and continental reconstructions of phylogeny and biogeographic history. Recent studies on caviomorph rodents have implicated an unrecognized center of diversification in the central Andes, while studies on bats have identified a flurry of recent Andean speciation. The program offers abundant training opportunities for American and Latin American students, both in the lab and in the field. Check out this slideshow of bats encountered during our last expedition to Ecuador!
Beginning in 2011, I started a parallel project on the The Bats of Kenya with colleagues Paul Webala and Carl Dick. This project is designed to document the distribution and status of more than 100 species of bats that occur in Kenya and to shed light on their ecological roles. More about that project can be found here.
Lestoros inca, near La Esperanza, Cusco, Peru, representing an order of marsupials (Paucituberculata) that is now restricted to Andean South America (photo by B D Patterson 2002)
A second, derivative program focuses on host-parasite coevolution. Ectoparasites recovered from mammal and bird specimens are used to reconstruct the evolutionary radiations of parasite groups and assess their current distributions across hosts and geography, factors governing their distribution, abundance, and host specificity. Work on bat flies has been developed with Carl Dick (until 2009 a post-doc here at the Museum, but now at Western Kentucky University) and Katharina Dittmar (SUNY Buffalo) on their ecology and phylogeny. With NSF funding, we recently curated the world's largest collection of flies, which now guides our understanding of host associations and fuels the taxon-sampling in our phylogenetic work (also supported by NSF). Undergrad and grad students are involved in this work in Chicago, Buffalo, and Bowling Green.Interest in the mostly unexplored ectoparasite communities of African bats helped fuel my collaboration with Kenya Wildlife Service ecologist Paul Webala on surveying the diverse bat communities of Kenya (see above).
Lavia frons, a "false vampire" (Megadermatidae), from Tsavo Kenya (photo by B D Patterson 2006)
A research program that I am now wrapping up (still several papers to write!) focused on the Tsavo lions, infamous as man-eaters a century ago but more remarkable because many of them lack manes. In a series of papers, I have been exploring the morphology, genetics, behavior, and ecology of lions in SE Kenya with Samuel Kasiki and Alex Mwazo (Kenya Wildlife Service), Roland Kays (NY State Museum), Jean Dubach (Loyola University) and other collaborators. Our aim has been to understand this distinctive and environmentally-plastic trait (manelessness) at genetic, hormonal, histological, anatomical, and behavioral levels. Concurrently, we gathered information to mitigate the impacts of lion depredations on livestock to ensure their continued survival and the preservation of their habitats. Until 2009, this project had the help of volunteers from the Earthwatch Institute, but we suspended that program pending the restoration of the Taita-Rukinga Conservancy.
Collaring a male lion named Kabochi for the third time, as part of Earthwatch-funded research in Tsavo, Kenya, in 2007 (photo by B A Harney)
I also examine hierarchical structure in species' distributions and, with collaborator Wirt Atmar, developed concepts and algorithms for exploring nested subsets of species in ecological communities. Nestedness occurs when the species found in smaller fragments constitute nested or proper subsets of those in progressively richer biotas. I periodically revisit and re-evaluate this paradigm, considering its extensions to other areas of biogeography, ecology, and evolution. Nested patterns prove to be amazingly common in nature, and scientists are beginning to appreciate their significance for studying coevolutionary partnerships, especially mutualisms (plants and their pollinators/seed-dispersers) and host-parasite systems. A 2009 paper in Ecography offered a cautionary tale on their application to host-parasite systems. A 2011 paper in Journal of Arid Environments applied them to macroecological analyses of Egyptian rodents, while a 2012 paper in Global Ecology and Biogeography related nested subsets to other types of metacommunity structures. I am working now with grad student Nate Upham on how phylogenetic relatedness affects nestedness.
Nested subsets, a hierarchical pattern of species distributions that is especially common on habitat fragments.
As detailed in Students, interactions with undergraduate and graduate students enrich, extend, and complement these studies. All four research arenas offer opportunities for student research projects and post-graduate collaborations alike.