Terry Chesser, Ph.D. (Former Employee)

Phylogenetic relationships among swifts of the morphologically conservative genus Chaetura were studied using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences. Taxon sampling included all species and 21 of 30 taxa (species and subspecies) within Chaetura. Our results indicate that Chaetura is monophyletic and support the division of the genus into the two subgenera previously identified using...

Recent reviews identified the reliance on fecal or cloacal samples as a significant limitation hindering our understanding of the avian gastrointestinal (gut) microbiota and its function. We investigated the microbiota of the esophagus, duodenum, cecum, and colon of a wild urban population of Canada goose (Branta canadensis). From a population sample of 30 individuals, we sequenced the...

This is the 17th supplement since publication of the 7th edition of the Check-list of North American Birds (American Ornithologists' Union [AOU] 1998). It summarizes decisions made between April 15, 2016, and April 15, 2017, by the AOS's Committee on Classification and Nomenclature—North and Middle America. The Committee has continued to operate in the manner outlined in the 42nd...

Host–parasite coevolutionary histories can differ among multiple groups of parasites associated with the same group of hosts. For example, parasitic wing and body lice (Insecta: Phthiraptera) of New World pigeons and doves (Aves: Columbidae) differ in their cophylogenetic patterns, with body lice exhibiting higher phylogenetic congruence with their hosts than wing lice. In this study, we...

Because a broad spectrum of resource use allows species to persist in a wide range of habitat types, and thus permits them to occupy large geographical areas, and because broadly distributed species have access to more diverse resource bases, the resource breadth hypothesis posits that the diversity of resources used by organisms should be positively related with the extent of their...

Species complexes that have undergone recent radiations are often characterized by extensive allele sharing due to recent ancestry and (or) introgressive hybridization. This can result in discordant evolutionary histories of genes and heterogeneous genomes, making delineating species limits difficult. Here we examine the phylogenetic relationships among a complex group of birds, the...