Photograph by Mark Hafner

A search begun 17 January will continue for thirty good weather days in order to follow up on an undocumented report of a sighting of a pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area east of Baton Rouge.  The report by LSU Forestry graduate student David Kulivan of the observation made in April 1999 spurred the search, which is sponsored by Zeiss Sports Optics with several collaborating institutions, Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University, Natural Heritage Program, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Biological Sciences graduate student Alison Styring is a member of the six person team conducting the search. Complete information and daily updates can be found from a link on Van Remson's web page linked above. The birds are believed to have been extinct for sixty years, but rumors of sightings continue to come from bottomland areas including  several localities, including the Big Thicket (eastern Texas) and Cuba before the most recent Pearl River report. The extinction of the woodpecker came with habitat loss, specifically, the loss of nesting sites for the cavity-nesting birds in heart-rotted trees.  Once the older, and thus larger, hardwood trees with heart rots were logged out of bottomlands, the birds could not excavate the intact wood in younger trees lacking rots. Heart rots to provide nesting sites are common in hardwood trees, but only after they attain a certain age, a time when they are of value as timber.  A similar situation occurs in conifer plantations that are managed on a substantially shorter rotation period than the eighty years required for extensive invasions by Phellinus pini, the fungus causing the rot that provides nesting sites for the red-cockaded woodpecker.  Ed. note --What happened to the ivory-billed woodpecker's fungal associate?  Did it survive in smaller trees? News from the News The Atlanta Journal and Constitution,  January 18, 2002,  Home Edition,  Pg. 18A,  Rare or extinct? Experts seek ivory-billed bird,  Charles Seabrook USA Today,  January 17, 2002, Search for ivory-billed woodpecker begins,  Kathleen Fackelmann  Wall Street Journal,  January 16, 2002, Wednesday,  Section A; Page 1, Column 4, Ruffled feathers: bird "extinct" for 6 decades inspires a search party, Dan Morse The Times-Picayune (New Orleans),  January 15, 2002; National, Pg. 1,  Birdcall heard 'round the world; 'Extinct' woodpecker is sought in swamp,  By Robert George; Staff writer  The Hartford Courant, January 2, 2002, Statewide,  Editorial; Pg. A6,  Treasure Hunt The Ottawa Citizen,  December 24, 2001,   Ho! The Ottawa Citizen,  December 21, 2001, Rare sightings inspire scientific searches: Unseen and presumed extinct for 50 years, ivory-billed woodpecker has been spotted,  Alison Korn The Times (London),  December 21, 200,  Overseas news,  Search for lost bird of Louisiana,  Nicholas Wapshott in New York The Washington Post,  December 20, 200, Final Edition,  A SECTION; Pg. A03, Tracking Down a True Rara Avis; Long Believed Extinct, Majestic Woodpecker Spotted in Wildlife Area,  Eric Pianin, Washington Post Staff Writer

Late January brought a surprise visit from BioSci Newsletter readers and correspondents in Kuwait. Virginia and Jim Bishop (Ph.D. degree from the Department of Marine Sciences in 1974) were in Baton Rouge for a family visit, and they stopped by the department to leave some botanical specimens collected from markets in Kuwait.

Links to alumni

Unparalleled research opportunity for undergraduates.  See the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Biological Sciences site or contact Sherry Wischusen for the details.

• Undergraduate research at LSU
• So you want to be a....

An award of $79,000 from the Coypu Foundation will go to field work on birds in Peru and Sabah (northern Borneo).  This grant was written largely by Van Remsen.  The Coypu Foundation was set up with a bequest from the estate of Mr. John S. McIlhenny, a long time patron of the Museum's field programs, and it has kindly supported several proposals from the Museum, including one that funded the John Stauffer McIlhenny Professorship in Natural Science held by Remsen.

 A second award of $197,000 was made to Fred Sheldon and Jim McGuire by the NSF to curate the collection of reptile and amphibian tissues in the Museum's Collection of Genetic Resources.  Most of these specimens were collected by Professor Emeritus Herb Dessauer of the LSU Medical Center in New Orleans over a 30-year period from the 1950s to the 1980s.  They are currently kept in ultracold freezers, but with the help of this grant the specimens will be moved to liquid nitrogen storage and, in the process, the packaging and labeling of the specimens will be improved.  This grant includes funds for a graduate curatorial assistant, who will oversee the upgrade.

• Maistrello, L., G. Henderson and R.A. Laine. 2001. Efficacy of vetiver oil and nootkatone as soil barriers against Formosan subterranean termite (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae). J. Econ. Entomol. 94: 1532-1537.
• Chang, S.H., and R.G. Kemp. 2002.  Role of Ser530, Arg292 and His662 in the Allosteric Behavior of Rabbit Muscle Phosphofructokinase. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Comm. 290:670-675.
• Collins, B. S. and L. L. Battaglia.  2002.   Microenvironmental heterogeneity and Quercus michauxii regeneration in experimental canopy gaps.  Forest  Ecology and Management 155:  279-290.   The article is part of a special issue of the journal entitled "Forest ecology in the next millennium :  putting the long view into practice"