PhD Student Researches Clues to Hawaiian Bird Devastation

Jon Beadell in French Polynesia

On his journey to his research area in the South Pacific, Jon Beadell went armed with the tools of 21 st century field research, but the trip was more like something out of an old Humphrey Bogart film. Hoping to better understand immunological changes in island birds, the Maryland Ph.D. biology student sailed by cargo ship (definitely not romantic, he says) to Rimatara in French Polynesia, a 3-square mile tropical paradise that Beadell describes as "one big garden."

He also visited the sun-soaked coral atoll Kiritimati, where he attempted to capture birds in 30 mile-an-hour winds. On both islands, Beadell hoped to find clues as to whether other species of isolated birds could suffer the same fate as the Hawaiian honeycreepers. Many of the honeycreepers were decimated by avian malaria and pox, most likely introduced by Europeans who brought exotic birds to Hawaii. "Is this going to happen again in the Pacific?" Beadell asked.

Jon captures spinetail

As do a number of University of Maryland graduate and undergraduate students, Beadell traveled far from the College Park campus to study global questions. In Beadell's case, going to the remote locations was key to testing whether isolated birds are exposed to fewer diseases, and whether this, combined with reduced genetic diversity may impair their ability to fight off new introduced disease.

The warblers that he studied on Rimatara and Kiritimati exist nowhere else in the world, and the species on Kiritimati (the Bokikokiko) is the only perching bird on that island. "These bird communities are pretty amazing in their isolation," says Beadell. "Some of these warblers have been on the islands for approximately a million years. When birds colonize islands, they lose some of their genetic diversity. I wanted to see if some components of immunity are lost in that process."

His findings? "Island birds do tend to have fewer parasites and reduced genetic diversity, but this was not reflected by any uniform changes to the immune system " Beadell's research included a coadvisor and support from the Smithsonian Institution.

Beadell plans to continue his study of infectious disease in wildlife, but he hopes to look at questions that may have a greater impact on human health.