Why are birds so strikingly diverse in color and shape? What evolutionary processes and mechanisms have shaped this diversity? This chat will explore these key questions as well as visual communication and signaling in birds and the morphological traits of their eggs. Cassie Stoddard will also discuss how hummingbirds perceive colors beyond the human visual spectrum, including ultraviolet light and the cuckoo’s remarkable ability to mimic the eggs of its host species.

Speaker
Mary Caswell (Cassie) Stoddard, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, studies bird coloration, vision and eggshells as part of her research to understand avian evolution. In 2016, Stoddard and her team initiated a pioneering study on hummingbird color vision in the wild, through a research program at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, to understand how hummingbirds use their advanced color vision in daily life.

Stoddard also launched the Princeton Better for Birds Project, an initiative aimed at fostering a deeper appreciation for birds and promoting their conservation on the University’s campus. As part of this effort, in late 2023 Stoddard organized a “BirDiversity” art exhibition, which showcased more than 100 pieces of bird-related art submitted by 50 Princeton students and faculty.

Stoddard received her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she researched avian vision and plumage color evolution at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. She received a Marshall Scholarship and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to study at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her Ph.D. research. Stoddard joined the Harvard Society of Fellows in 2012 as a junior fellow and was named a 2013 L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellow. She has since received a 2018 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a 2018 Packard Fellowship and a 2022 Schmidt Science Polymath Award.

Moderator

Wenfei Tong ’05 is a biologist with a passion for understanding and conserving the natural world. She enjoys sharing her love of birds and biology through her paintings, photography, teaching and writing. Her books, “Bird Love” and “Understanding Bird Behavior,” use scientific discoveries to show how much humans and birds share, including some of literature’s most basic themes. Her ultimate aim is to inspire as many people as possible to care for and thus protect nature. 

Tong grew up in Singapore, where she started birding at 12. She first got hooked on field biology as an undergraduate at Princeton and Oxford, and has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Harvard. She has guided natural history tours in Tanzania, the Galapagos and Montana, where she is active in the conservation community and takes visitors birding on horseback. She now works at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. For more information about Tong’s writing, teaching, guiding and research, please visit www.wenfeitong.com.

This event is part of the TigerSide Chats lecture series and is open to the public. Register today