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Published: February 6, 2012

Remembering Volunteer Paul Baker

John Bates, Curator and Section Head, Life Sciences, Negaunee Integrative Research Center

Several weekends ago, many friends of Paul Baker gathered on a Saturday in the museum to remember him.  Paul lost a short battle with cancer in December, and it was a wonderful ceremony full of the wonderful memories Paul’s many friends and family had of him.  I want to write about him, because he had a long-time association with the museum as an employee in Exhibits and Institutional advancement and particularly because he was a long-time volunteer in the Bird Division.  Paul loved birds and he was devoted to the Bird Division.  People like Paul do not grow on trees, he had extensive knowledge about all aspects of the museum because he loved the place, and anyone who met him would be instantly aware of that.

Several weekends ago, many friends of Paul Baker gathered on a Saturday in the museum to remember him.  Paul lost a short battle with cancer in December, and it was a wonderful ceremony full of the wonderful memories Paul’s many friends and family had of him.  I want to write about him, because he had a long-time association with the museum as an employee in Exhibits and Institutional advancement and particularly because he was a long-time volunteer in the Bird Division.  Paul loved birds and he was devoted to the Bird Division.  People like Paul do not grow on trees, he had extensive knowledge about all aspects of the museum because he loved the place, and anyone who met him would be instantly aware of that. 

We always felt that when Paul was working in Institutional Advancement he gave the best tours of the Bird Division because of his attachment to both the museum and the division.  Over the years, he did a variety of long-term projects as our volunteer including scanning much of Dave Willard’s extensive slide collection spanning numerous expeditions and tours around the world.  He also organized the nest collection, which had become disorganized because it had been moved several times in recent years.  Paul was a great personality, always upbeat, and even when things were getting heated, he had a knack for defusing them with a quick joke or a useful observation.  Cards handed out at his memorial service showed a photo of a smiling Paul with a mug in his hand and a quote that said “Table for one” which we learned was what he would say when an argument started when he was working in Exhibits on the “What is an Animal?” project.

The picture here captures what I always admired most about Paul.  I remember when John Weinstein was doing these portraits for staff who were doing various public programs around the museum (this was before the web and these were placed on poster board that would stand on easels).  Most of us were uncomfortable trying to come up with some objects to be photographed with.  Not Paul, he quickly picked out things, excitedly choosing everything in the photo.  He did not want the most unusual or rare specimens; he wanted the kinds of things he would show people on one of his tours.  The smile on his face should tell you that he was ready to tell you about an ostrich egg or a mounted starling with the kind of enthusiasm that made everyone realize what an exciting topic he was talking about.  We will miss him.

John Bates
Curator and Section Head, Life Sciences

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The tropics harbor the highest species diversity on the planet.  I am most intrigued by evolution at the tips of the tree of life.  My students and I study genetic structure in tropical birds and other organisms to address how this diversity evolved and how it continues to evolve as climates change and humans continue to alter landscapes.

We study comparative genetic structure and evolution primarily in the Afrotropics, the Neotropics, and the Asian tropics.  I am an ornithologist, but students working with me and my wife Shannon Hackett and other museum curators also have studied amphibians and small mammals (bats and rodents) and more recently internal, external and blood parasites (e.g., Lutz et al. 2015, Block et al. 2015, Patitucci et al. 2016).  Research in the our lab has involved gathering and interpreting genetic data in both phylogeographic and phylogenetic frameworks. Phylogenetic work on Neotropical birds has focused on rates of diversification and comparative biogeography (Tello and Bates 2007, Pantané et al 2009, Patel et al. 2011, Lutz et al. 2013, Dantas et al. 2015).  Phylogeographic work has sought to understand comparative patterns of divergence at level of population and species across different biomes (Bates et al 2003, Bates et al. 2004, Bowie et al. 2006, I. Caballero dissertation research, Block et al. 2015, Winger and Bates 2015, Lawson et al. 2015).  We also have used genetic data to better understand evolutionary patterns in relation to climate change across landscapes (e.g., Carnaval and Bates 2007) that include the Albertine Rift (through our MacArthur Grants, e.g., Voelker et al. 2010, Engel et al. 2014), the Eastern Arc Mountains (Lawson dissertation research, Lawson et al. 2015), the Philippines (T. Roberts and S. Weyandt dissertation research) and South America, particularly the Amazon (Savit dissertation research, Savit and Bates 2015, Figueiredo et al. 2013), and we are entering into the genomic realm focusing initially on Andean (Winger et al. 2015) and Amazonian birds (through our NSF Dimensions of Diversity grant). Shane DuBay is doing his dissertation research in the Himalayas on physiological plasticity in Tarsiger Bush Robins.  Nick Crouch, who I co-advise at U. Illinois, Chicago with Roberta Mason-Gamer, is studying specialization in birds from a modern phylogenetic perspective.  We seek to create a broader understanding of diversification in the tropics from a comparative biogeographic framework (Silva and Bates 2002, Kahindo et al, 2007, Bates et al. 2008, Antonelli et al. 2009).  João Capurucho (U. Illinois, Chicago, co-advised with Mary Ashley)  is studying phlylogeography of Amazonian white sand specialist birds and Natalia Piland (Committee on Evolutionary Biology, U. Chicago) is studying the impact of urbanization on Neotropical birds.  New graduate student Valentina Gomez Bahamon (U. Illinois, Chicago) is also working Boris Igic and me, after doing her Master Degree in her native Colombia on genomics and the evolution of migrating Fork-tailed Flycatchers (Tyrannus savana).  Jacob Cooper (Committee on Evolutionary Biology, U. Chicago) is studying the diversification of birds in Afromonte forests

Josh Engel and I are working up multi-species phylogeographic studies of birds across the Albertine Rift, based the Bird Division's long term research throughout the region.  We are working up similar data sets for Malawian birds.  Our current NSF Dimensions of Diversity grant on the assembly of the Amazonian biota and our NSF grant to survey birds and their parasites across the southern Amazon are generating genomic data for analysis in collaboration with paleoecologists, climatologists, geologists, and remote sensing experts from the U.S. and Brazil.  These large collaborative projects are providing new perspectives on the history of Amazonia.

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